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BEHAVIORISM 


The People’s Institute 
“Tectures-in-Print” Series 





PSYCHOLOGY 

by Everett Dean Martin $3.00 
BEHAVIORISM 

by John B. Watson 7 $3.00 


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BEHAVIORISM 


John B. ‘Watson 


Formerly Professor of Psychology and Director of the 
Psychological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University. 
Lecturer, The New School for Social Research. 





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To 
STANLEY RESOR 


Whose unfailing interest in both 
industry and science has given me 
the opportunity to write this book. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive — 
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Preface 


HILE this volume is written as a series of lectures 

and in a somewhat free and easy style, every effort 
has been made to present facts in unmutilated form and 
to state theoretical positions with accuracy. 

In approaching subjective psychology for the first time, 
the reader meets with one great difficulty. He comes in 
from the world of things—a world which he can manipulate, 
hold up, examine and change about. When he comes to 
subjective psychology, he leaves all this behind; he has to 
face a world of intangibles, a world of definitions, and it 
takes him weeks to find out what this kind of psychology 
is about. Rare indeed is the individual who ever thoroughly 
awakens to the problems discussed in the general text books 
of introspective psychologies current today. 

Because behavioristic psychology deals with tangibles, 
the reader sees no break between his physical, chemical, and 
biological world and his newly-faced behavioristic world. 
He may not like the simplicity and severity of Behavior- 
ism, but he cannot fail to understand Behaviorism if he 
but gives it a little honest reading, 

Therefore, the author hopes that this book will offer a 
happy approach to the whole field of psychology. 


JoHN B. Watson 
Malba, Long Island, New York 





Contents 


LECTURE 

hi WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? > « » « The old and new 
Psychology contrasted. 

II. HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR..... Prob- 
lems, methods, technique and samples of results, 

Ut THE HUMAN TBODY? a... 23 What it is made of, how 
it is put together, and how it works. 
Part I—The structures that make Behavior possible, 

IV. THE HUMAN BODY..... What it is made of, how 


v VII. 


it is put together, and how it works. 
Part Il]—The glands in everyday Behavior. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? .... 


Part I—On the subject of talent and tendencies and the 
inheritance of all so-called ‘mental’ traits. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? .... 


Part II—What the experimental study of the human young 
teaches us. 


EMOTIONS. .... What emotions are we born with—how 
do we acquire new ones—how do we lose our old ones? 
Part I—A general survey of the field and some experimen- 
tal studies. 


WILT EMOTIONS: .e02": What emotions are we born with—how 


IX. 


Wy XII. 


do we acquire new ones—how do we lose our old ones? 
Part IJ—Further experiments and observations on how we 
acquire, shift and lose our emotional life. 


OUR MANUAL HABITS. .... How and when they 


start, how we retain them, and how we discard them. 


TALKING AND THINKING. .... Which when 


rightly understood goes far in breaking down the fiction 
that there is any such thing as mental life, 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS ... . Ordoes 
our whole body do the thinking? 


PERSONALITY: 2 Presenting the thesis that our 


personality is but a reflection of the genetic history of 
our habits. 


Pace 


61 


74 


87 


108 


132 


159 


180 


202 


216 


we CDF int 


Toten 





I 
WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM?P 


The Old and New Psychology Contrasted 


BEFORE beginning our study of “behaviorism” or “behavioristic” psy- 

chology, it will be worth our while to take a few minutes to look at the 
conventional school of psychology that flourished before the advent of 
behaviorism in 1912—and that still flourishes. Indeed we should point 
out at once that behaviorism has not as yet by any means replaced the 
older psychology—called introspective psychology—ot James, Wundt, 
Kilpe, Titchener, Angell, Judd, and McDougall. Possibly the easiest way 
to bring out the contrast between the old psychology and the new is to 
say that all schools of psychology except that of behaviorism claim that 
“consciousness” is the subject matter of psychology. Behaviorism, on the 
contrary, holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the be- 
havior or activities of the human being. Behaviorism claims that “con- 
sciousness” is neither a definable nor a usable concept; that it is merely 
another word for the “soul” of more ancient times. The old psychology 
is thus dominated by a kind of subtle religious philosophy. 


The Religious Background of Current Introspective Psychology 


No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started. 
It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind. Certain 
individuals who in primitive society declined to work with their hands, 
to go out hunting, to make flints, to dig for roots, became keen observers 
of human nature. 


They found that the loud noise from breaking limbs, thunder and 
other sound-producing phenomena, would throw the primitive individual 
from his very birth into a panicky state, causing him to stop the chase, to 
cry, to hide and the like—and that in this state it was easy to train or, more 
scientifically, to condition him. (I will talk to you about conditioning and 
conditioned reflexes later on in this lecture and again in the second lec- 
ture.) These lazy but good observers soon found devices by means of 
which they could at will throw individuals into this fearsome attitude and 
thus control primitive human behavior. For example, colored nurses down 
South have gained control over the young white children by telling them 
that there is someone ready to grab them in the dark; that when it is 
thundering there is a fearsome power which they can appease by being 


3 


4 BEHAVIORISM 


good boys and girls. The “medicine men” of primitive times soon estab- 
lished an elaborate control through signs, symbols, rituals, formulae, and 
the like. Medicine men have always flourished. A good medicine man 
has the best of everything and, best of all, he doesn’t have to work. 
These individuals have been variously called medicine men, soothsayers, 
dream-interpreters and prophets. Skill in bringing about these emotional 
conditionings of the people increased rapidly ; organization among medicine 
men took place and we began to have religions of one kind or another, 
and churches, temples, cathedrals and the like, each presided over by a 
medicine man. 


I think an examination of the psychological history of people will 
show that their behavior has always been easily controlled by fear stimuli. 
. If the fear element were dropped out of any religion, that religion could 
not long survive. This fear element (equivalent to the electric shock in 
establishing conditioned reflexes see p. 21) was variously introduced as 
the “devil,” “evil,” “sin” and the like. The individual who functions as 
a medicine man in the narrow family group is, of course, always the 
father. In the larger group God or Jehovah takes the place of the family 
father. Thus even the modern child from the beginning is confronted by 
the dicta of medicine men—be they the father, the soothsayer of the village, 
the God or Jehovah. Having been brought up in this attitude towards 
authority, he never questions the concepts imposed upon him. 


An Example of Such Concepts 


One example of such a concept is that there is a fearsome God and 
that every individual has a soul which is separate and distinct from the 
body. This soul is really a part of the supreme being. This concept 
has led to the philosophical platform called ‘dualism.” All psychology 
except behaviorism is dualistic. That is to say we have both a mind (soul) 
and a body. This dogma has been present in human psychology from 
earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a 
test tube, or has in any way come into relationship with it as he has with 
the other objects of his daily experience. Nevertheless, to doubt its exis- 
tence is to become a heretic and once might possibly even have led to the 
loss of one’s head. Even today the man holding a public position dare not 
question it. 


With the development of the physical sciences which came with the 
renaissance, a certain release from this stifling soul cloud was obtained. 
A man could think of astronomy, of the celestial bodies and their motions, 
of gravitation and the like, without involving soul. Although the early 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 5 


scientists were as a rule devout Christians, nevertheless they began to 
leave soul out of their test tubes. Psychology and philosophy, however, 
in dealing as they thought with non-material objects, found it difficult 
to escape the language of the church, and hence the concepts of mind and 
soul come down to the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was the 
boast of Wundt’s students, in 1879, when the first psychological labora- 
tory was established, that psychology had at last become a science without 
a soul. For fifty years we have kept this pseudo-science, exactly as 
Wundt laid it down. All that Wundt and his students really accomplished 
was to substitute for the word “soul” the word “consciousness,” 


An Examination of Consciousness 


From the time of Wundt on, consciousness becomes the keynote of 
psychology. It is the keynote of all psychologies today except behavior- 
ism. It is a plain assumption just as unprovable, just as unapproachable, 
as the old concept of the soul. And to the behaviorist the two terms are 
essentially identical, so far as concerns their metaphysical’ implications. 


To show how unscientific is the concept, look for a moment at William 
James’ definition of psychology. “Psychology is the description and ex- 
planation of states of consciousness as such.” Starting with a definition 
which assumes what he starts out to prove, he escapes his difficulty by 
an argumentum ad hominem. Consciousness—Oh, yes, everybody must 
know what this “‘consciousness” is. When we have a sensation of red, a 
perception, a thought, when we will to do something, or when we purpose 
to do something, or when we desire to do something, we are being con- 
scious. All other introspectionists are equally illogical. In other words, 
they do not tell us what consciousness is, but merely begin to put things 
into it by assumption; and then when they come to analyze consciousness, 
naturally they find in it just what they put into it. Consequently, in the 
analyses of consciousness made by certain of the psychologists you find 
such elements as sensations and their ghosts, the wages. With others you 
find not only sensations, but so-called affective elements ; in still others you 
find such elements as wtll—the so-called conative element in consciousness. 
With some psychologists you find many hundreds of sensations of a cer- 
tain type; others maintain that only a few of that type exist. And so it 
goes. Literally hundreds of thousands of printed pages have been pub- 
lished on the minute analysis of this intangible something called ‘conscious- 
ness, And how do we begin work upon it? Not by analyzing it as we 
would a chemical compound, or the way a plant grows. No, those things 
are material things. This thing we call consciousness can be analyzed only 


6 BEHAVIORISM 


by introspection—a looking in on what goes on inside of us. 


As a result of this major assumption that there is such a thing as 
consciousness and that we can analyze it by introspection, we find as 
many analyses as there are individual psychologists. There is no way of 
experimentally attacking and solving psychological problems and standard- 
izing methods, 


The Advent of the Behaviorists 


In 1912 the behaviorists reached the conclusion that they could no 
longer be content to work with intangibles and unapproachables. They 
decided either to give up psychology or else to make it a natural science. 
They saw their brother-scientists making progress in medicine, in chem- 
istry, in physics. Every new discovery in those fields was of prime im- 
portance; every new element isolated in one laboratory could be isolated 
in some other laboratory; each new element was immediately taken up 
in the warp and woof of science as a whole. May I call your attention to 
the wireless, to radium, to insulin, to thyroxin, and hundreds of others? 
Elements so isolated and methods so formulated immediately began to 
function in human achievement. 


In his first efforts to get uniformity in subject matter and in methods 
the behaviorist began his own formulation of the problem of psychology 
by sweeping aside all mediaeval conceptions. He dropped from his scien- 
tific vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, 
desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively 
defined, 


The Behaviorist’'s Platform 


The behaviorist asks: Why don’t we make what we can observe the 
' real field of psychology? Let us limit ourselves to things that can be 
observed, and formulate laws concerning only those things. Now what 
can we observe? Well, we can observe behavior—what the organism does 
or says. And let me make this fundamental point at once: that saying is 
doing—that is, behaving. Speaking overtly or to ourselves (thinking) is 
just as objective a type of behavior as baseball. 


The rule, or measuring rod, which the behaviorist puts in front of him 
always is: Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of “‘stimulus 
and response’? By stimulus we mean any object in the general environ- 
ment or any change in the tissues themselves due to the physiological © 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 7 


condition of the animal, such as the change we get when we keep an ani- 
mal from sex activity, when we keep it from feeding, when we keep it 
from building a nest. By response we mean anything the animal does— 
such as turning towards or away from a light, jumping at a sound, and 
more highly organized activities such as building a skyscraper, drawing 
plans, having babies, writing books, and the like. 


At this point let me diverge to emphasize the fact that almost from 
infancy society begins to prescribe behavior. A Chinese baby must use 
chop sticks, eat rice, wear certain kinds of clothes, grow a queue, learn 
to speak Chinese, sit in a certain kind of way, worship his ancestors, and 
the like. The American baby must use a fork, learn quickly to form habits 
of personal cleanliness, wear certain kinds of clothes, learn reading, writ- 
ing and arithmetic, become monogamous, worship the Christian God, go 
to church and, yes, even to speak upon a public platform. It is presumably 
not the function of the behaviorist to discuss whether these things which 
society prescribes serve as a help or a hindrance to the growth or adjust- 
ment of an individual. The behaviorist is working under the mandates of 
society and consequently it does come within his province to say to society: 
“Tf you decide that the human organism should behave in this way, you 
must arrange situations of such and such kinds.” I would like to point out 
here that some time we will have a behavioristic ethics, experimental in 
type, which will tell us whether it is advisable from the standpoint of 
present and future adjustments of the individual to have one wife or many 
wives; to have capital punishment or punishment of any kind; whether 
prohibition or no prohibition; easy divorces or no divorces; whether many 
of our other prescribed courses of conduct make for adjustment of the 
individual or the contrary, such for example as having a family life or 
even knowing our own fathers and mothers, 


Some Specific Problems of the Behaviorists 


You will find, then, the behaviorist working like any other scientist. 
His sole object is to gather facts about behavior—verify his data—subject 
them both to logic and to mathematics (the tools of every scientist). He 
brings the newborn individual into Mis experimental nursery and begins to 
set problems: What is the baby doing now? What is the stimulus that 
makes him behave this way? He finds that the stimulus of tickling the 
cheek brings the response of turning the mouth to the side stimulated. 
The stimulus of the nipple brings out the sucking response. The stimulus 
of a rod placed on the palm of the hand brings closure of the hand and 
the suspension of the whole body by that hand and arm if the rod is raised. 


8 BEHAVIORISM 


Stimulating the infant with a rapidly moving shadow across the eye will 
not produce blinking until the individual is sixty-five days of age. Stimu- 
lating the infant with an apple or stick of candy or any other object will 
not call out attempts at reaching until the baby is around 120 days of age. 
Stimulating a properly brought up infant at any age with snakes, fish, 
darkness, burning paper, birds, cats, dogs, monkeys, will not bring out that 
type of response which we call “fear” (which I would rather call reaction 
“X”) which is a catching of the breath, a stiffening of the whole body, a 
turning away of the body from the source of stimulation, a running or 
crawling away. (See lecture 7.) 


On the other hand, there are just two things which will call out a 
fear response, namely, a loud sound, and loss of support. 


Now the behaviorist finds from observing children brought up outside 
of his nursery that hundreds of these objects will call out fear responses. 
Consequently, the scientific question arises: If at birth only two stimuli 
will call out fear, how do all these other things ever finally come to call it 
out? Please notice that the question is not a speculative one. It can be 
answered by experiments, and the experiments can be reproduced and the 
same findings can be had in every laboratory in the land. Convince your- 
self of this by making a simple test. 


If you will take a snake, mouse or dog and show it to a baby who has 
never seen these objects or been frightened in other ways, he begins to 
manipulate it, poking at this, that or the other part. Do this for ten days 
until you are logically certain that the child will always go towards the dog 
and never run away from it (positive reaction) and that it does not call out 
a fear response at any time. In contrast to this, pick up a steel bar and 
strike upon it loudly behind the infant’s head. Immediately the fear re- 
sponse is called forth. Now try this: At the instant you show him the 
animal and just as he begins to reach for it, strike the steel bar behind 
his head. Repeat the experiment three or four times. A new and import- 
ant change is apparent. The animal now calls out the same response as 
the steel bar, namely a fear response. We call this, in behavioristic psy- 
chology, the conditioned emotional response—a form of conditioned reflex. 


Our studies of conditioned reflexes make it easy for us to account for 
the child’s fear of the dog on a thoroughly natural science basis without 
lugging in consciousness or any other so-called mental, process. A dog 
comes toward the child rapidly, jumps upon him, pushes him down and at 
the same time barks loudly. Oftentimes one such combined stimulation 
is all that is necessary to make the baby run away from the dog the moment 
it comes within his range of vision. 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 9 


In another lecture I shall show you other conditioned emotional res- 
ponses, such as those connected with love, where the mother by petting the 
child, rocking it, stimulating its sex organs in bathing, and the like, calls 
out the embrace, gurgling and crowing as an unlearned original response. 
Soon this response becomes conditioned. The mere sight of the mother 
calls out the same kind of response as actual bodily contacts. I should 
like to point out that in rage we get a similar set of facts. The stimulus 
of holding the infant’s moving members brings out the original unlearned 
response we call rage. Soon the mere sight of a nurse that handles a 
child badly throws the child into a fit. Thus we see how relatively simple 
our emotional responses are in the beginning and how terribly complicated 
home life soon makes them. . 


In the next lecture we shall develop the idea of conditioned responses 
in general. We can set up conditioned responses in animals as low in 
the scale as the amoeba—not necessarily of the same kind as the above, but 
similar ones. 


The behaviorist has his problems with the adult as well. What 
methods shall we use systematically to condition the adult? For example, 
to teach him business habits, scientific habits? Both manual habits (tech- 
nique and skill) and laryngeal habits (habits of speech and thought) must 
be formed and tied together before the task of learning is complete. After 
these work habits are formed, what system of changing stimuli shall we 
surround him with in order to keep his level of efficiency high and con- 
stafitly rising ? 


In addition to vocational habits, there comes the problem of his 
emotional life. How much of it is carried over from childhood? What 
part of it interferes with his present adjustment? How can we make him 
lose this part of it; that is, uncondition him where unconditioning is nec- 
essary, and condition him where conditioning is necessary? Indeed we 
know nothing about the amount and kind of emotional or, better, visceral 
habits (by this term we mean that our stomach, intestines, breathing, etc. 
become conditioned—form habits) that should be formed. In one of the 
later lectures I wish to bring out the fact that visceral habits can be formed, 
that organization in this field is possible but has hitherto been neglected. 


Probably more adults in this universe of ours suffer vicissitudes in 
family life and in business activities because of poor and insufficient 
visceral habits than through the lack of technique and skill in manual and 
verbal accomplishments. One of the large problems in big organizations 
teday is that of personality adjustments. The young men and young 


10 BEHAVIORISM 


women entering business organizations have plenty of skill to do their 
work but they fail because they do not know how to get along with other 
people. 


Does This Behavioristic Approach Leave Anything Out of Psychology? 


After hearing this brief survey of the behavioristsic approach to the 
problems of psychology, I can almost hear you exclaiming: “Why, yes, it 
is worth while to study human behavior in this way, but the study of 
behavior is not the whole of psychology. It leaves out too much. Don’t 
I have sensations, perceptions, conceptions? Do I not forget things and 
remember things, imagine things, have visual images and auditory images 
of things I once have seen and heard? Can I not see and hear things that 
I have never seen or heard in nature? Can I not be attentive or inatten- 
tive? Can I not will to do a thing or will not to do it, as the case may be? 
Do not certain things arouse pleasure in me, and others displeasure? Be- 
haviorism is trying to rob us of everything we have believed in since 
earliest childhood.” 


Having been brought up on introspective psychology, as most of you 
have, these questions are perfectly natural and you will find it hard to 
put away this terminology and begin to formulate your psychological life 
in terms of behaviorism. Behaviorism is new wine and it will not,go into 
old bottles; therefore I am going to try to make new bottles out of 
you. I am going to ask you to put away all of your oid presuppositions 
and to allay your natural antagonism and accept the behavioristic plat- 
form at least for this series of lectures. Before they end I hope 
you will find that you have progressed so far with behaviorism that 
the questions you now raise will answer themselves in a perfectly satisfac- 
tory natural science way. Let me hasten to add that if I were to ask you 
to tell me what you mean by the terms you have been in the habit of using) 
I could soon make you tongue tied with contradictions. I believe I could 
even convince you that you do not know what you mean by them. You 
have been using them uncritically as a part of your social and literary 
tradition, Let us forget them until later lectures, 


Io Understand Behaviorism Begin to Observe People 


This is the fundamental starting point of behaviorism. You will 
soon find that instead of self-observation being the easiest and most natural 
way of studying psychology, it is an impossible one; you can observe in 
yourselves only the most elementary forms of response. You will find, on 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 11 


the other hand, that when you begin to study what your neighbor is doing, 
you will rapidly become proficient in giving a reason for his behavior and 
in setting situations, (presenting stimuli) that will make him behave in a 
predictable manner. 


Definition of Behaviorism 


Definitions are not as popular today as they used to be. The defini- 
tion of any one science, physics, for example. would necessarily include 
the definition of all other sciences. And the same is true of behaviorism. 
About all that. we can do in the way of defining a science at the present 
time is to mark a ring around that part of the whole of natural science 
that we claim particularly as our own. 


| Behaviorism, as you have already grasped from our preliminary dis- 
cussion, is, then, a natural science that takes the whole field of human 
adjustments as its own. Its closest scientific companion is physiology. 
Indeed you may wonder, as we proceed, whether behaviorism can be dif- 
ferentiated from that science. It is different from physiology only in the 
grouping of its problems, not in fundamentals or in central viewpoint. 
Physiology is particularly interested in the functioning of parts of the 
animal—for example, its digestive system, the circulatory system, the 
nervous system, the excretory systems, the mechanics of neural and muscu- 
lar response. Behaviorism, on the other hand, while it is intensely inter- 
ested in all of the functioning of these parts, is intrinsically interested in 
what the whole animal will do from morning to night and from night to 
morning. 


The interest of the behaviorist in man’s doings is more than the 
interest of the spectator—he wants to control man’s reactions as physical 
Scientists want to control and manipulate other natural phenomena. It 
is the business of behavioristic psychology to be able to predict and to 
control human activity. To do this it must gather scientific data by experi- 
mental methods. Only then can the trained behaviorist predict, given the 
stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what 
the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction. 


Let us look for a moment more closely at the two terms—stimulus 
and response. 


What ts a Stumulus? 


If I suddenly flash a strong light in your eye, your pupil will contract 
rapidly. If I were suddenly to shut off all light in the room, the pupil 


12 BEHAVIORISM 


would begin to widen. If a pistol shot were suddenly fired in the back 
part of the room, practically all of you would jump and possibly turn your 
heads around. If hydrogen sulphide were suddenly released in the room 
you would begin to hold your noses and possibly even seek to leave the 
room. If I suddenly made the room very warm, you would begin to un- 
button your coats and perspire. If I suddenly made it cold, another re- 
sponse would take place. 


Again, on the inside of us we have an equally large realm in which 
stimuli can exert their effect. For example, just before dinner tonight the 
muscles of your stomach began to contract and expand rhythmically be- 
cause of the absence of food. As soon as food was eaten those contrac- 
tions ceased. By swallowing a small balloon and attaching it to a record- 
ing instrument we can easily register the response of the stomach to lack 
of food and note the lack of response when food is present. In the male, 
at any rate, the pressure of certain fluids (semen) may lead to sex activity. 
In the case of the female possibly the presence of certain chemical bodies 
can lead in a similar way to overt sex behavior. The muscles of our arms 
and legs and trunk are not only subject to stimuli coming from the blood, 
they are also stimulated by their own responses—that is, the muscle is 
under constant tension; any increase in that tension, as when a movement 
is made, gives rise to a stimulus which leads to another response in that 
same muscle or in one in some distant part of the body; any decrease in 
that tension, as when the muscle is relaxed, similarly gives rise to a stimu- 
lus. 


So we see that the organism is constantly assailed by stimuli—which 
come through the eye, the ear, the nose and the mouth—the so-called 
objects of our environment; at the same time the inside of our body is like- 
wise assailed at every movement by stimuli arising from changes in the 
tissues themselves. Don’t get the idea, please, that the inside of your body 
is any different or any more mysterious than the outside of your body. 


Through the process of evolution human beings have put on sense 
organs—specialized areas where special types of stimuli are most effective 
—such as the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the skin and semi-circular 
ceanalst, To these must be added the whole muscular system, both the 
striped muscles and the unstriped muscles. The muscles are thus not only 
organs of response—they are sense organs as well. You will see as we 
proceed with the lectures that the last two systems play a tremendous role 


1 In my third lecture I will tell you how sense organs are made wp and what their general 
relation is to the rest of the body. 


er 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 13 


in the behavior of the human being. Many of our most intimate and 
personal reactions are due to stimuli set up by tissue changes in our striped 
muscles and in our viscera, 


How Training Ever Enlarges the Range of Stimuli to Which We Respond 


One of the problems of behaviorism is what might be called the 
ever increasing range of stimuli to which an individual responds. In- 
deed so marked is this that you might be tempted at first sight to doubt 
the formulation we gave above, namely that response can be predicted. If 
you will watch the growth and development of behavior in the human 
being, you will find that while a great many stimuli will produce a response 
in the new-born, many other stimuli will not. At any rate they do not call 
out the same response they later call out. For example, you don’t get 
very far by showing a new-born infant a crayon, a piece of paper, or the 
printed score of a Beethoven symphony. In other words, habit formation 
has to come in before certain stimuli can become effective. Later I shall 
take up with you the procedure by means of which we can get stimuli 
which do not ordinarily call out responses to call them out. The general 
term we use to describe this is “conditioning.” Conditioned responses will 
be more fully gone into in the next lecture. 


it is due to conditioning from earliest childhood on that the problem 
of the behaviorist in predicting what a given response will be is so diffi- 
cult. The sight of a horse does not ordinarily produce the fear response, 
and yet there is one person here tonight who will walk a block to avoid 
coming near to a horse. While the study of behaviorism will never enable 
its students to look at you and predict that such a state of affairs exists, 
nevertheless if the behaviorist sees that reaction taking place, it is very 
easy for him to state approximately what the situation was in the early 
experience of such a one that brought about this unusual type of adult 
response. After all, though, we have proceeded upon this practical basis 
since the time of Adam, 


What Does the Behaviorist Mean by Response? 


We have already brought out the fact that from birth to death the 
organism is being assailed by stimuli on the outside of the body and by 
stimuli arising in the body itself. Now the organism does something 
when it is assailed by stimuli. It responds. It moves. The response may 
be so slight that it can be observed only by the use of instruments. The 
response may confine itself merely to a change in respiration, or to an in- 


14 BEHAVIORISM 


crease or decrease in blood pressure. It may call out merely a movement 
of the eye. The more commonly observed responses, however, are move- 
ments of the whole body, movements of the arm, leg, trunk, or combina- 
tions of all the moving parts. 


Usually the response that the organism makes to a stimulus brings 
about an adjustment, though not always. By an adjustment we mean 
merely that the organism by moving so alters its physiological state that 
the stimulus no longer arouses reaction. This may sound a bit complicated, 
but examples will clear it up. If I am hungry, stomach contractions begin 
to drive me ceaselessly to and fro. If, in these restless seeking movements, 
I spy apples on a tree, I immediately climb the tree and pluck the apples 
and begin to eat. When surfeited, the stomach contractions cease. Al- 
though there are apples still hanging round about me, I no longer pluck 
and eat them. Again, the cold air stimulates me. I move around about 
until I am out of the wind. In the open I may even dig a hole. Having 
escaped the wind, it no longer stimulates me to further action. Under sex 
excitement the male may go to any length to capture a willing female. 
Once sex activity has been completed the restless seeking movements dis- 
appear. The female no longer stimulates the male to sex activity. 


The behaviorist has often been criticized for this emphasis upon 
response. Some psychologists seem to have the notion that the behaviorist 
is interested only in the recording of minute muscular responses. Nothing 
could be further from the truth, Let me emphasize again that the be- 
haviorist is primarily interested in the behavior of the whole man. From 
morning to night he watches him perform his daily round of duties. If 
it is brick-laying, he would like to measure the number of bricks he can 
lay under different conditions, how long he can go without dropping from 
fatigue, how long it takes him to learn his trade, whether we can improve 
his efficiency or get him to do the same amount of work in a less period 
of time. In other words, the response the behaviorist is interested in is 
the commonsense answer to the question “what is he doing and why is he 
doing it?’ Surely with this as a general statement, no one can distort the 
the behaviorist’s platform to such an extent that it can be claimed that the 
behaviorist is merely a muscle physiologist. 


The behaviorist claims that there is a response to every effective 
stimulus and that the response is immediate. By effective stimulus we 
mean that it must be strong enough to overcome the normal resistance to 
the passage of the sensory impulse from sense organs to muscles. Don’t 
get confused at this point by what the psychologist and the psycho-analyst 
sometimes tell you. If you read their statements, you are likely to believe 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 15 


that the stimulus can be applied today and produce its effect maybe the 
next day, maybe within the next few months, or years. The behaviorist 
doesn’t believe in any such mythological conception. It is true that I can 
give the verbal stimulus to you “Meet me at the Belmont tomorrow for 
lunch at one o’clock.” Your immediate response is “All right, I’ll be 
there.” Now what happens after that? We will not cross this difficult 
bridge now but may I point out that we have in our verbal habits a mech- 
anism by means of which the stimulus is reapplied from moment to mo- 
ment until the final reaction occurs, namely going to the Belmont at one 
o’clock the next day. 


General Classification of Response 


The two commonsense classifications of response are “external” and 
“internal”—or possibly the terms “overt” (explicit) and “implicit” are 
better. By external or overt responses we mean the ordinary doings of the 
human being—he stoops to pick up a tennis ball, he writes a letter, he 
enters an automobile and starts driving, he digs a hole in the ground, he 
sits down to write a lecture, or dances, or flirts with a woman, or makes 
love to his wife. We do not need instruments to make these observations. 
On the other hand, responses may be wholly confined to the muscular and 
glandular systems inside the body. A child or hungry adult may be stand- 
ing stock still in front of a window filled with pastry. Your first exclama- 
tion may be “he isn’t doing anything” or “he is just looking at the pastry.” 
An instrument would show that his salivary glands are pouring out se- 
cretions, that his stomach is rhythmically contracting and expanding, and 
that marked changes in blood pressure are taking place—that the endo- 
crine glands are pouring substances into the blood. The internal or im- 
plicit responses are difficult to observe, not because they are inherently 
different from the external or overt responses, but merely because they 
are hidden from the eye. 


Another general classification is that of learned and unlearned re- 
sponses. I brought out the fact a little while ago that the range of stimuli 
to which we react is ever increasing. The behaviorist has found by his 
study that most of the things we see the adult doing are really learned. 
We used to think that a lot of them were instinctive, that is “unlearned.” 
But we are now almost at! the point of throwing away the word “instinct.” 
Still there are a lot of things we do that we do not have to learn—to per- 
spire, to breathe, to have our heart beat, to have digestion take place, to 
have our eyes turn toward a source of light, to have our pupils contract, 
to show a fear response when a loud sound is given. Let us keep as our 


16 BEHAVIORISM 


y 


second classification then “learned responses,’ and make it include all of 
our complicated habits and all of our conditioned responses; and “‘un- 
learned” responses, and mean by that all of the things that we do in 
earliest infancy before the processes of conditioning and habit formation 
get the upper hand. 


Another purely logical way to classify responses is to designate them 
by the sense organ which initiates them. We could thus have a visual 
unlearned response—for example, the turning of the eye of the youngster 
at birth toward a source of light. Contrast this with a visual learned 
response, the response, for example, to a printed score of music or a word. 
Again, we could have a kinaesthetic' unlearned response when the infant 
reacts by crying to a long-sustained twisted position of the arm. We 
could have a kinaesthetic learned response when we manipulate a delicate 
object in the dark or, for example, tread a tortuous maze. Again, we can 
have a visceral unlearned response where pressure of the urine produces 
an erection in the male. Contrast this with the learned or visceral condi- 
tioned response where the sight of a certain female or even the sound of 
her voice or the perfume that she usually wears will produce an erection. 


This discussion of stimulus and response shows what material we 
have to work with in behavioristic psychology and why behavioristic psy- 
chology has as its goal to be able, given the stimulus, to predict the re- 
sponse—or, seeing the reaction take place to state what the stimulus is that 
has called out the reaction, 


Is Behaviorism Merely a Methodological Approach to the Study of 
Psychological Problems, or is it an Actual System of Psychology? 


If psychology can do without the terms “mind” and “consciousness,” 
indeed if it can find no objective evidence for their existence, what is 
going to become of philosophy and the so-called social sciences which 
today are built around the concept of mind and consciousness? Almost 
every day the behaviorist is asked this question, sometimes in a friendly 
inquiring way, and sometimes not so kindly. While behaviorism was 
fighting for its existence it was afraid to answer this question. Its con- 
tentions were too new; its field too unworked for it to allow itself even to 
think that some day it might be able to stand up and to tell philosophy and 
the social sciences that they, too, must scrutinize anew their own premises. 


1 By kinaesthetic we mean the muscle sense. Our muscles are supplied with sensory nerve 
endings. When we move the muscles these sensory nerve endings are stimulated, Thus, 
the stimulus to the kinaesthetic or muscle sense is a movement of the muscle tself. 


WHAT IS BEHAVIORISM? 17 


Hence the behaviorist’s one answer when approached in this way was to 
say, “I can’t let myself worry about such questions now. Behaviorism is 
at present a satisfactory way of going at the solution of psychological 
problems—it is really a methodological approach to psychological prob- 
lems.” Today behaviorism is strongly entrenched. It finds its way of 
going at the study of psychological problems and its formulation of those 
problems growing more and more adequate. 


Today the behaviorist can safely throw out a real challenge to the 
subjective psychologists—‘Show us that you have a possible method, 
indeed that you have even a legitimate subject matter. Prove to us that 
philosophy and the social sciences based upon your speculations have any 
right to further take up the time and thought of developing students.” 


The past ten years have seen a growing tendency—but one combatted 
at every point by the old line philosopher—on the part of the “mental 
sciences” to crawl over the stone wall that separates them from behavior- 
ism. Let me put all of these “sciences” based upon the concept of mind 
on the left hand side of a vertical line; on the right hand side of the line 
I shall show you their present trend: 


Up to the Advent of Behaviorism Now Showing the Following 
Dominated by Concept of Leanings: 
Consciousness: 
Introspective psychology. Behaviorism. 
Functional psychology. 


Philosophy. Gradually disappearing and become 
ing the history of science. 


Ethics. Experimental ethics based entirely 
upon behavioristic methods. 


. : Rapidly becoming a _behavioristic 
peau SyCHOLOEY study of how groups—family, vil- 
lage, national, church and the like— 
build up habits (attitudes) in the 
individual during the formative 
period and thus maintain control of 

him throughout life. 


Sociology. Merging into behavioristic social 
psychology and into economics. 


18 BEHAVIORISM 


Up to the Advent of Behaviorism 
Dominated by Concept of 
Consciousness : 


Religion. 


Psycho-Analysis 

(Based largely upon religion, intro- 
spective psychology, and Voodoo- 
ism, 


Now Showing the Following 
Leanings : 


Being replaced among the educated’ 
by experimental ethics. 


Being replaced slowly by behavior- 
istic studies on the human child 
where scientific methods are being 
established for conditioning and un- 
conditioning the child. When such 
studies are carried to an ideal state, 
there should be no reason for psy- 
chopathic breakdowns or disturb- 
ances in the adult. 


While this discussion does not completely answer the question whether 
behaviorism is a system or a method, nevertheless it does show that be- 
havioristic formulations are becoming central in the whole field of what 
has hitherto been called ‘“‘the mental and moral sciences.” 


I hope in the remaining lectures to show you why behavioristic formu- 
lations and methods are an adequate way of accounting for all psycho- 


logical problems. 


Il 
HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 
Problems, Methods, Technique, and Samples of Results 


Analyzing Psychological Problems 


Our last lecture touched many things lightly. From now on we must 
prepare ourselves for more strenuous undertakings. In that lecture we 
found that the behaviorist is constantly working with stimuli whose effect 
on the human organism is unknown. He seeks to find out what kind of 
reaction they will call forth when presented singly or in combination. He 
varies not only the combination in which they are presented but their in- 
tensity and the length of time they are allowed to exert their effect. 


For example, a mother is sleeping in a chair in front of me. I speak 
to her but my voice does not call out a response. I make my dog bark 
gently out in the yard; that likewise fails to call out a response. Then I 
go to the sleeping room of her youngest child and cause it to cry. Im- 
mediately the mother springs from the chair and runs to the child’s room. 
_I next determine scientifically how strong the cry must be and the length 
of time it must endure before the response is called out. I next vary 
conditions, then I work with many other mothers; I apply mathematics and 
logic to my results. This would be scientific procedure. But from a 
commonsense point of view the whole result is expressed by the old famil- 
lar saying—‘the slightest cry of her infant wakes a sleeping mother.” 


Another example. My Airedale dog lies asleep at my feet. What 
will happen if I rustle the paper? Only a change in respiration. If I 
throw down a small note book? It causes a change in respiration—a 
quickened pulse and a slight movement of the tail and foot. I get up 
without touching him—immediately the dog springs up ready to play, 
fight or eat. 


Now the human race has been in existence for many hundreds of 
thousands of years; during that time (even though at times we have 
followed the false psychological god Introspection) we have succeeded 
in gathering a lot of data on the effect various stimuli have upon human 
behavior. 


Possibly you may think I am choosing pretty artificial illustrations— 
you may maintain that we never play with situations and stimuli as I have 


19 


20 BEHAVIORISM 


here suggested. Go then to real life. We increase our employees’ salaries. 
We offer a bonus—we offer them homes at nominal rental so they can 
get married. We put in baths—playgrounds. We are constantly manipu- 
lating stimuli, dangling this, that and the other combinations in front of 
the human being in order to determine the reactions they will bring forth 
—hoping that the reaction will be “in line with progress”, “desirable”, 
“sood”. (And society really means by “desirable”, “good”, “in line with 
progress”, reactions that will not disturb its recognized and established 
traditional order of things.) 


Sometimes, on the other hand, the behaviorist (and I am now going 
to admit that we are all behaviorists—we have to be) works the other way 
round. The individual is doing something—reacting—behaving. The 
behaviorist, to make his methods socially effective, to be able to reproduce 
this reaction at another time (and possibly in other individuals as well) 
attempts to determine what the situation is that causes this particular 
reaction, 


I see some of you yawning and fighting sleep in this crowded room. 
IT see the same behavior every night after we have been together for 
about one half hour. Why? Some of you may say that it is a stupid 
lecture—some that the ventilation is bad—and if they are scientifically 
inclined they may even elaborate by saying “You see, in a crowded room 
like this the oxygen is used up rapidly—this causes an excess of carbon 
dioxide in the air we breathe; carbon dioxide is bad for you—it makes 
you yawny and sleepy and if the tension gets very high it may even kill 
you.” But suppose I am not satisfied and begin to experiment? We have 
actually made such experiments but I will not take time now to tell you 
about them—I’ll just give you the result. You yawn and grow sleepy 
because of the increasing heat around your body—especially in the un- 
stirred air spaces between your skin and clothing. If the janitor would 
put in two or three fans to keep the air stirred up, your yawning and 
sleepiness would disappear—the slightly increased CO, tension while it 
is a fact, has nothing to do with the reaction. Scientific method has en- 
abled us not only to find the stimulus causing the reaction but also how 
effectively to control the reaction by removing or modifying the stimulus. 


General Formulation 


We have gone far enough for you to see that we can throw our psy- 
chological problems and their solutions into terms of stimulus and response. 
Let us use the abbreviations S for stimulus (or the more complex situa- 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 21 


tion) and R for response. We may schematise our psychological problems 
as follows: 


RS FAL lad hatan ts ad sedan UNAM ech R 
Given ?(to be determined) 
Ro adh be LAE Ad oe Mees atias de ona banirratsbea? Seb ee DS kg al R 
?(to be determined) given 
Your problem reaches its explanation always when: 
NS einbas Sohal ssl Fo ea neat ed NE TRL AN R 
has been determined has been determined 


Substitution of stimuli or conditioning of stimuli 


So far our method has been stated very simply. I have led you to 
believe that the stimulus necessary to call out the reaction exists some- 
where as a kind of entity only waiting to be found and presented to your 
subject. I have talked, too, as though the reaction were a fixed kind of 
thing or entity ready to be called out the moment the organism is stimu- 
lated appropriately. A little observation shows that our formulation is in- 
exact and in need of modification. I pointed out in the last lecture that 
some stimuli when first applied seem to exert no marked effect and 
certainly not the effect they come later to exert. Let us illustrate this 
by going back to our formula. Suppose for example we take an already 
established (unlearned) reaction with both stimulus and response known, 
such as: 


Electric shock Withdrawal of hand 


Now the mere visual stimulus of a patch of red light will not cause the 
withdrawal of the hand. The patch of red light may produce no marked 
reaction whatsoever (what reaction does appear will depend upon previous 
conditioning). Butif I show the red light and then immediately or shortly 
thereafter stimulate my subject’s hand with the electric current and repeat 
this routine often enough, the red light will cause the immediate with- 
drawal of the hand. The red light now becomes a substitute stimulus—it 
will call out the R whenever it stimulates the subject in that setting. Some- 
thing has happened to bring about this change. This change, as we have 
pointed out, is called conditioning—the reaction remains the same but we 
have increased the number of stimuli that will call it out. To express the 
new state of affairs we (rather inaccurately) describe the change by 


ce BEHAVIORISM 


speaking of the stimulus as being “conditioned.” Please remember, though, 
that when we speak both of conditioned stimuli and of conditioned re- 
sponses, we mean that what is conditioned is the whole organism. 


Contrasted with a conditioned stimulus we have the unconditioned. 
Certain stimuli from birth will call out definite responses. A few exam- 
ples of unconditioned stimuli are as follows: 


ae AA ENN OR ACER INS SM A eae R 
Light Closing pupil, turning eyes 
Tapping tendon below knee Kickup of leg (Patellar 
reflex ) 
Acid in the mouth Salivary secretion 
Pricking, burning and Withdrawal of body, crying, 
cutting skin screaming, etc 


Observations on infants show quickly that while there are thousands of 
unconditioned stimuli, they are relatively few when contrasted with the 
conditioned. Conditioned stimuli are legion in number. Every one of the 
printed and written 15,000 words that a well educated individual can 
respond to in an organized way must be looked upon as an example of 
a conditioned stimulus. Each tool that we work with, each person that 
we respond to are equally good examples. The total number of con- 
ditioned and unconditioned stimuli to which we can respond has never 
been determined. 


The importance of stimulus substitution or stimulus conditioning 
cannot be overrated. It enormously widens the range of things that will 
bring out responses. So far as we know now (actual experimental evi- 
dence is lacking) we can take any stimulus calling out a standard reaction 
and substitute another stimulus for it, 


Let us go back to our general formula for a moment: 


It is obvious that when we determine S we must now tell whether it is a 
U (unconditioned) stimulus or a C (conditioned) stimulus. Experiment 
teaches us as is shown in the above table that a drop of acid in the mouth 
will from birth produce a flow of saliva. This is an example of a native 
or unconditioned stimulus. The sight of the smoking hot cherry pie that 
causes the salivary glands to flow so fully is an example of a conditioned 
visual stimulus. The sound of the gentle footsteps of the mother that stops 
the crying of her child is an example of a conditioned auditory stimulus. 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 23 


Substitution of Response 


Can we substitute or condition responses? Experiment teaches us 
that the process of response substitution or conditioning does take place 
in all animals throughout life. Yesterday his puppy called out from a 
two-year-old child—fondling, pet words, play and laughter: 


pa PALS Rn AAP olin arena as tak ALAR 2 a ata R 
Sight of dog Manipulation, laughter, etc. 
Today the dog calls out: 
tS pst dean d nh Managed ended eb coal SAME MED css R 
Sight of dog Screaming, 


withdrawal of body, 


Something happened. Late yesterday the dog bit him too hard in play— 
broke the skin and caused bleeding. We know that 


Cutting, burning of skin withdrawal of body, etc. 
screaming, etc. 


In other words while the visual stimulus dog has remained substantially 
the same, the reaction belonging to another unconditioned stimulus (cut- 
ting, pricking skin) has made its appearance.* 


The conditioning of responses is just as important as the conditioning 
of stimuli. It possibly has even greater social bearing. Many of 
us are surrounded by fixed unchangeable situations such as the kind 
of home we live in, parents who must be petted and handled gently, 
wives “who do not understand,” sex hungers from which there is no 
escaping (for example, marriage to an invalid or insane husband 
or wife), malformations of the body (permanent inferiorities), and 
the like. The reactions that we now make to these permanent stimuli are 
often abortive, inadequate for adjustment; they wreck our constitutions 
and may make us psychopathic. The fact that different reactions can 
be conditioned—Adolph Meyer calls them “substitutive”’ reactions—gives 
us a real hope for future generations if not for our own. ‘This process 
is sometimes called “sublimation.” Whether conditioned, substituted or 
sublimated activity is just as adequate for permanent adjustment as the 
unconditioned has not yet been completely physiologically grounded. 


1 From a laboratory standpoint there is ultimately no fundamental difference between a condi: 
tioned stimulus and a conditioned response. 


24 BEHAVIORISM 


Judging from the lack of permanence of many of the “cures” of the 
psycho-analyst, one is inclined to think that substitutive reactions, in the 
realm of sex at any rate, will not remain adequate for the organism. 


Can We Make or Build in Totally New Responses? 


Certainly no structurally new pathways are found in the brain after 
infancy. Neural connections are largely laid down at birth. Yet the num- 
ber of unconditioned, unlearned responses is too small to care for the adult. 
May I call your attention, though, to the fact that there are thousands of 
simple unlearned and unconditioned responses, such as finger and arm 
movemerits, eye movements, toe and leg movements, that escape the notice 
of all but trained observers. These are the elements out of which our 
organized, learned, responses must be formed and apparently by the process 
of conditioning. These simple, unconditioned, embryological responses, 
by the presentation of appropriate stimuli (society does this for us), can 
be grouped and tied together into complex conditioned responses, or habits, 
such as tennis, fencing, shoe-making, mother reactions, religious reactions, 
and the like. These complex responses are thus integrations. The organ- 
ism starts out life with more unit responses than it needs. Relatively few 
of its vast resources, numerous as its organized complicated acts seem to 
be, are ever utilized. 


For examples of unconditioned but diffuse and widespread groups of 
responses to a stimulus changing over into a circumscribed group of 
conditioned responses (or habits) let us go to the white rat. It has been 
without food for 24 hours. I put food in a wire problem box opened by 
raising an old-fashioned wooden latch. The rat has never been in this 
situation before. By hypothesis we will assume that all of its first reactions 
are native and unlearned (which is of course not the case). What does it 
do? It runs round and round, bites at the wire, pokes its nose between 
meshes, pulls cage toward it, sticks claws into moving door, raises head and 
smells about the cage. Notice that every part reaction necessary to the 
solution of the problem has been many times displayed. These part- 
reactions are present in its repertoire of unconditioned or unlearned acts. 
They are (1) walking or running to the door, (2) raising the head (which 
if done at a given point will result in knocking the latch up), (3) pulling 
at the moving door with the claws, (4) climbing over the sill to the food. 
Out of the rat’s vast display of unconditioned responses only 4 are needed 
-—if given time it will always accidentally stumble upon the solution. But to 
solve the problem efficiently these 4 part reactions must be spaced and 
timed—patterned or integrated. When integration, patterning or con- 


HOW, TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 25 


ditioning is complete, all other responses except 1-2-3-4 disappear. We 
would correctly speak of this 1-2-3-4 response as being a new and con- 
ditioned response. We usually call this process the formation of a habit. 


Most of you have studied habit formation and at least think you 
know a great deal about it. But even if you knew all of the existing data 
about it you could hardly construct a tenable theory of how habits are 
formed. Both introspectionists and behaviorists have worked en masse, 
so to speak, in this field in order to settle various questions of fact—such 
as the factors making for rapidity of habit formation, accuracy of habits, 
permanence of habits, effects of age on habit formation; the effect of 
forming two or more habits simultaneously; the transfer of habits and the 
like. But no experimenter has yet set his experimental problems in such 
a way as to construct from his data a guiding theory of habit formation. 


Even today the relationship between what is generally called habit 
formation and the conditioning of stimuli and of responses has not been 
worked out. Personally I think there is little new in habit formation, but 
I may be over-simplifying it. When we are teaching the animal or human 
to go to a red light and not to a green, or to stay on the true pathway and 
out of the culs-de-sac, or to open the problem box above described, I 
think we are merely establishing a conditioned response—the stimulus 
remains constant. We work to get a “new” or conditioned reaction. 
When, however, there is social or experimental need to keep the reaction 
constant but to change the stimulus, as happens when an individual for 
long periods makes love reactions to a certain female who will have none 
of him (thereby possibly endangering his whole life structure) there is 
need for stimulus substitution (“transfer,” the psycho-analysts call it). 
If the substitution takes place we have an example of a conditioned 
stimulus. 


While our studies on the formation of habits in both the human and 
animal realms have lacked theoretical guidance, nevertheless much informa- 
tion valuable for psychology has been obtained from them. Indeed the 
prosecution of work on “habit formation” can be said to have been the 
chief business of the psychologist until the very recent introduction of con- 
ditioned reflex methods. This is causing a re-envisagement of the whole 
problem and the rearrangement of our whole experimental program. 


We shall postpone further discussion of “habit formation” proper 
until a later lecture and continue here with experimental work done on 
“conditioned reflexes.”’ You will notice that most of the experimental work 
concerns itself really with stimulus substitutions and not with reaction 


26 BEHAVIORISM 


substitutions. There has been relatively little experimental work done 
upon reaction substitutions. Much of the practical work of the psychia- 
trists and of the analysts has been of this character. If time permitted I 
should like to discuss this phase of our problem more at length. Inhibi- 
tion of response (by conditioning) is another problem of equal importance. 
This, likewise, we shall have to neglect. 


Conditioned Reflex Methods 
Stimulus Substitution in Glandular Reactions 


Laboratory studies on stimulus substitution have progressed further 
in the animal field than in the human field. It may be worth your while 
to review with me some of the work on the dog. Conditioned reflex work 
began upon the dog and the experimental exactness of the method can 
there best be demonstrated. The Russian physiologist, Pavlov, and his 
students have been chiefly responsible for this work. 


Please recall for a moment that there are two different sets of tissue 
with which we can respond: 1, our glands; and 2, our muscles (and there 
are really two kinds of muscles, striped and visceral). 


The gland usually selected for experimentation is the salivary gland. 
According to Dr. G. V. Anrep, a former pupil of Pavlov, the salivary gland 
is a simple organ, not a composite one like the muscular, system of the body. 
It is far more independent too of the body than is the muscular system, 
and the activity of the gland can be graduated with greater ease than can 
muscular action. 


The fundamental or unconditioned stimulus, as we have stated be- 
fore, calling out a salivary response is some food or acid substance intro- 
duced into the mouth: 


Food, acid Salivary flow 


The problem now is to take some other stimulus that does not call out a 
salivary flow—indeed it may not call out any marked general response 
from the dog—and get it to call out the salivary response. Experiment 
shows that visual stimuli, such as colored discs, geometrical forms, simple 
noises, pure tones, bodily contacts, will not call out the salivary response. 
Any one of them can, however, be made to. A simple operation is first 
performed on the dog by making a permanent fistula of the parotid duct— 
that is, a small opening is made to lead from the gland to the external 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR ah 


surface of the cheek and a small tube is cemented to this outlet. The 
drops of saliva coming from the gland now pass out through an external 
tube instead of into the mouth. This tube is made to connect with an 
apparatus which records automatically the number of drops that flow from 
the gland. The animal is isolated from the experimenter and from any 
auditory, olfactory, visual or other stimuli not controlled by the investi- 
gator. The application of both the unconditioned and the conditioned 
stimuli is performed automatically from outside the animal room. The 
animal is viewed by means of a periscope. 


It is found that we may substitute for food or acid any stimulus at 
will and get the salivary response, provided we apply this stimulus (C) 
simultaneously with the food or acid stimulus (U) ; indeed we may even 
apply the C stimulus before the U stimulus. Apparently, however, if the U 
stimulus is given first, the conditioning does not take place. For example, 
Krestovnikov worked for a year giving the U stimulus first and applying 
the C stimulus only a few seconds later without ever establishing the 
reaction. When the C stimulus precedes the U stimulus the conditioning 
takes place after about 20 to 30 combined applications. The time interval 
between the application of C before the beginning of U may be varied 
from a few seconds up to five or more minutes. 


Suppose in a given case we wish to make a tactual stimulation call 
out a salivary response. We stimulate the animal tactually for 4 sec- 
onds on one spot on the left thigh and then apply after a pause of 4 or 
5 seconds the unconditioned stimulus, powdered meat and dog biscuit 
(U). We continue this routine for approximately two months, giving 
from four to ten stimulations a day with a pause of from 7 to 45 minutes 
after each. By this time the stimulus substitution will be complete and 
the tactual stimulus (C) will yield the same number of drops of saliva as 
the powdered meat and dog biscuit (U). 


By this simple procedure we have widened the range of stimuli to 
which the dog can react in a definite way. Instead of our formula above, 
it now should read: 


RS Ady es al NA dal Mata a ARN eR ULL A Sa Uh R 
Powdered meat and dog biscuit For example, 60 drops 

or of saliva in 30 seconds 
Tactual stimulus on the left thigh each equal to 0.01 c.c, 


We have here an example of a complete stimulus substitution. The 
magnitude of the reaction following upon the conditioned stimulus is the 


28 BEHAVIORISM 


same as that called out by the unconditioned—within the limits of experi- 
mental error. 


By this simple procedure we can test out the whole range of stimuli 
to which an animal can respond. For example, suppose we have so con- 
ditioned an animal that light of any wave length brings out the salivary 
response. After conditioning it we next try to find out whether it is 
sensitive to wave lengths shorter than those that affect the human eye. 
We start in with green light from the spectrum and gradually increase 
the wave length of the stimulus light until the reaction fails. This gives 
the animal’s range in the longer wave lengths. Again we build up the 
reaction to the green light, then gradually shorten the wave length until the 
reaction breaks down. This gives us its range in the shorter wave lengths. 
We can work in the same way on the auditory side. It has been found by 
certain investigators that the dog will react to tones far higher in pitch 
frequency of vibration) than can the human being. Man and the dog have 
never been tested under identical conditions, however. 


Differential Glandular Responses 


With a slightly different procedure we can establish so-called differ- 
ential responses. Suppose, for example, we have conditioned the dog to 
a given tone A, until tone A calls out the salivary response just as does 
the powdered meat. Almost any other tone B will at first call out the 
salivary response (irradiation). Can we so change and build up the dog’s 
reaction system that he will not react to B but only to A? Yes, within 
the limits of the dog’s ability to respond to differences in pitch (which is 
somewhat in doubt). Anrep claims differential response to very slight 
difference in pitch. Johnson, working by another method, finds no differ- 
ential response to pitch differences. When working with differential re- 
actions to tonal stimuli, for example, we proceed to “fix” or circumscribe 
the stimulus A more narrowly by feeding each time A is sounded but never 
feeding when B is sounded. Very soon A will call forth the full secretion 
of saliva whereas B will not call out any secretion at all. 


This method is equally applicable in every sense field We can return 
accurate answers to the questions: How accurately can the dog react 
to noises, to differences in wave length, to odors, etc.? 


Some of the general facts summarized by Anrep, coming from the 
study of the salivary reflexes in dogs, may be enumerated as follows: 


1. The conditioned responses, like all other habits, are more or less tem- 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 29 


porary and unstable. After periods of no practice they cease to work; 
they break down. They can, however, be quickly reestablished. In 
one observed case in the salivary reflex of the dog a test was made 
after 2 years. The conditioned reflex was present but not invariable. 
After one reinforcement it was completely renewed. 


2. The substituted stimulus can be fixed and made specific. No other 
stimulus of its class will then call out the reflex. If you condition 
the dog to a metronome no other noise will call out the response. 


3. The magnitude of the response is dependent upon the strength of the 
stimulus. Increase the stimulus and there is an increase in the re- 
sponse. Again, if a continuous stimulus—say a noise or a tone—is 
interrupted, it has the same effect as strengthening the stimulus—an 
increased magnitude of response will appear. 


4, There is a marked summation effect. If a dog is conditioned separ- 
ately to sound and to color, there is a marked increase in the number 
of drops if the stimuli are given simultaneously. 


5. Conditioned responses can be “extinguished.” Lack of practice ex- 
tinguishes them. They can be extinguished by very rapid repetition 
of the stimulus. “Fatigue” is not the cause of their being extin- 
guished: in the case of a dog conditioned separately to sound and to 
color, if the visual stimulus is extinguished the auditory stimulus will 
call out the response in full force, 


Stimulus Substitution in Human Salivary Reactions 


I pointed out to you that to work on salivary responses in dogs a 
simple operation has to be performed. This is, of course, not possible in 
the case of human beings (except in cases of accident). Dr. K. S, Lash- 
ley, however, has perfected a small instrument which serves the same pur- 
pose. It consists of a small silver disc about the diameter of a 5-cent 
piece and about 1” thick, grooved on one surface so as to form two non- 
communicating chambers. Each chamber has a tiny silver tube leading 
out from it. The central chamber is placed over the tiny opening where 
the gland comes to the inner surface of the cheek. The tube leading from 
this chamber conducts the saliva outside the mouth to a recording appa- 
ratus. The tube from the other chamber leads over to a little aspirator 
that creates a partial vacuum in this chamber. This serves to make the 
whole disc cling tightly to the inner surface of the cheek. The whole 
apparatus, called a sialometer, is more comfortable than my description 
would seem to warrant. One can eat and sleep with it in place. 


30 BEHAVIORISM 


As in the case of the dog, food substances or acids (U) will call out 
a salivary response: 


Food, acid Secretion of salivary fluid 


In humans as well as in dogs stimulus substitutions can be made. The 
visual stimulus of a medicine dropper will not at first call out a salivary 
flow—but if the subject watches you dip the pipette into a solution of acid 
and then apply this acid to his tongue, the sight of the pipette soon 
comes to call out the salivary flow. Now we have: 


OI a Ea cS oa Mia Oe AN lA R 
Food, acid 
or Salivary flow 


Sight of pipette 


We have thus conditioned our subject. Here too, we have in the human 
widened the range of stimuli that will call out a salivary response. 


I have not the time tonight to go into all the work which has been 
done upon the human salivary gland. Conditioning takes place apparent- 
ly on a considerable scale throughout life—the watering of the mouth of 
the child or the adult at the sight of savory viands is a good example. 
Until experimental tests are made these conditioned responses cannot be 
observed. There is no question of “association of ideas’’-—the subject 
cannot “introspect about them”; he cannot even tell you whether they 
are present or not. May I in passing call your attention to the fact that 
this gland is not under so-called “voluntary” control—that is, that you can’t 
“will” to make it secrete or will” to make it stop secreting? 


Can Other Glands Be Conditioned? 


We certainly know from the work of Pavlov and his students that the 
glands of the stomach and other visceral glands can be conditioned just as 
are the salivary glands. Others have shown that glands in the stomach and 
other visceral glands can also be conditioned in the human being. We 
have no experimental work on stimulus substitution in other duct glands. 
We have reason to believe that urination and the orgasm in the male can 
be conditioned, but here we are probably dealing with muscular condition- 
ing which is discussed on page 32. 


The one other duct gland easily accessible to experimentation (but 
6o far as I know yet unexperimented upon) is the tear gland. Probably 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 31 


many of the tears of the infant—of the hardened theatre fan—of the 
criminal, and the malingering invalid are true examples of conditioning. 
The glands of the skin may also offer interesting experimental possibili- 
ties. 


Whether the ductless glands such as the thyroid, adrenal, pineal and 
others can be conditioned is unknown. But emotional reactions can be con- 
ditioned—and here the whole body is involved. If this is the case, ap- 
parently the ductless glands have to follow suit and play their own role. 
We have fair evidence that this is the case. In conditioned emotional 
reactions both adrenals and thyroids apparently do change their rhythm 
of functioning, 


Stimulus Substitution In Striped and Unstriped Motor Reactions. 
In Striped Muscle Reactions 


Bechterew, another Russian physiologist, and his students have taught 
us that stimuli calling out striped muscular responses of arms, legs, trunk, 
fingers, etc., similarly can be substituted for. One of the simplest ways 
to bring about an unconditioned response by an unconditioned stimulus is 
to use a cutting, bruising stimulus. The electric shock is a convenient one. 
Our formula would read originally ; 


Se aun Ve Aaa Bae I TE Oh. Urata UY R 
Cutting, bruising, burning, Withdrawal of arm, 
electric shock leg, finger 


If the foot rests upon an electric grill the foot will be jerked up each time 
_ the current is turned on. We can record on a smoked drum this jump of 
the leg. We can likewise record each time the electric shock is given. 


Now, early in this lecture I pointed out that ordinary visual and 
auditory objects do not call out this sudden reflex withdrawal of the 
foot. The noise of an ordinary electric buzzer for example will not. But 
stimulate the subject jointly with the buzzer and electro-tactually 24-30 
times (more in some subjects) and the buzzer alone will call out the with- 
drawal of the foot. Here again we have widened the range of situations 
that will call out this response. Our formula now reads: 


Seine ae ce Salvtek Ne Aare seen 6 R 
Electric Shock 
or Withdrawal of foot 


Buzzer 


a2 BEHAVIORISM 


H. Cason has shown that stimulus substitution takes place with wink- 
ing. The unlearned or unconditioned formula is as follows: 


seh LN Sab dati Naate Be aOR Sasa MEER GHEY 1 R 
(1) Bright light Rapid wink 
(2) Rapid approach of ob- (One of the fastest of 
jects towards eye human reflexes) 


(3) Irritation of cornea 
or conjunctiva of eye 
(4) Injury to lid itself 
(cutting, electric shock, 
etc. ) 


The noise of a telegraph sounder, or the slight click of a relay will 
not cause the wink reflex, but if the eyelid is electrically shocked just as 
the telegraph sounder or relay is sounded the substitution takes place 
rapidly. It is interesting to note that the substituted stimulus calls out a 
more rapid wink than the unconditioned stimulus. 


Again I cannot in a single lecture tell you much about how service- 
able this method is in teaching us to understand the makeup of a human 
being. Here too, we can as in the glandular field so “fix” a given stimulus. 
say a tone, noise, sight, or smell, that only that particular stimulus will call 
out the response. A thousand noises go on around the dozing mother 
as we showed on p. 19, without calling out the response of running to 
the child, but let the child itself stir or even murmur and up she springs. 
An auditory stimulus can be so strongly fixed, for example, middle C 
(256 d.v.) that another tone a fraction higher or lower will not call out 
the response, 


In Unstriped Muscular Reaction 


Considerable work has been done upon the conditioning of unstriped 
muscular tissue. The circular unstriped muscles of the stomach begin 
their rhythmical contractions after the stomach has been emptied of food. 
These so-called hunger contractions serve as the most powerful general 
stimuli we know. They initiate general bodily reactions usually called 
exploratory. After food has been obtained and eaten the contractions die 





1 In daily life I have seen many times an accidental contact with a hot electric iron or radiator 
condition a child (substitution of visual for tissue destroying, tactual stimulus) after one 


joint stimulation, We are shot through with such accidental conditionings from earliest 
infancy onward. 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR $3 


down. It is perfectly possible to change the rhythm of these reactions 
and make them dependent upon our regular meal time. The well-brought- 
up baby fed every three hours wakes up promptly at the end of the three 
hour interval and begins to fuss or cry. Change the interval to a four 
hour one and after a few days the infant wakes up promptly at the end of 
the fourth hour. 


One of the most interesting pieces of experimental work done in this 
field is that of Cason on the pupillary reflexes. There are two sets of 
unstriped muscular fibers in the eye. When the radial set contracts the 
pupil dilates. When the circular or sphincter set contracts the pupil grows 
smaller. The unconditioned formula is: 


LUE WR tect tse R aca DE LIOR pare ARC ME MAL IA (U) R 
Increase in light intensity Closure of pupil 
Decrease in light intensity Dilatation of pupil 


Stimulus substitution takes place here as in the various other reflexes. By 
stimulating the subject with an electric bell or a buzzer just as we increase 
or decrease the intensity of light falling on the retina, we finally condi- 
tion the subject so that the sound stimulus alone will call out either dilata- 
tion or constriction of the pupil, 


Substitution In the Field of Total Bodily Reactions (Conditioned 
Emotional Reactions) 


In Lecture 7 where we talk of so-called emotional reactions I will 
take up some experiments which show that certain unconditioned stimuli 
arousing total bodily reactions called “fear”, “rage”, “love”, etc., can be 
substituted for just as in the simple reflex field we have just studied. 
This accounts for the ever-increasing number of stimuli that can call out 
emotional (really visceral) reactions. This experimental work does away 
with the necessity for any “theory” of the emotions such as that of James. 
Though I suppose the introspectionists will be writing a hundred years 
from now as though James really had a theory of the emotions. Let us 
leave this discussion to a more appropriate place. 


Summary of Experiments on Stimulus Substitution 


In a single lecture it is impossible to do more than just sketch in a 
few general words the way the human body becomes conditioned. The 
main point to emphasize here is that practically every responding organ 


34 BEHAVIORISM 


of the body can be conditioned; and that this conditioning takes place not 
only throughout adult life but can and does take place daily from the 
moment of birth (in all probability before birth). Most of this organiza- 
tion takes place below the verbalized level. Indeed the glands and un- 
striped muscular tissue do not belong to our so-called voluntary systems 
of responses at all. All of us are shot through with stimulus substitutions 
of one kind or another which we know nothing about until the behaviorist 
tries us out and then tells about them. 


This field lies wholly outside the introspectionist’s field. He can get 
no grip on such reactions. This is an added proof that introspection can 
at best yield only a very meagre and incomplete kind of psychology. Later 
I shall attempt to show that “introspection” is nothing but another name 
for talking about bodily reactions which are taking place. It is not a gen- 
uine psychological method at all. 


The importance of early conditionings in building up bodily attitudes, 
especially on the emotional side, is almost undreamed of. It is practically 
impossible for us in adult life to have a “new” stimulus thrust upon us 
that does not arouse this vestigial organization. This work helps us, too, 
in understanding why behaviorists are growing away from the concept of 
instinct and substituting for it bodily sets and attitudes. 


Other Experimental Methods 


In one brief hour we can hardly hope to even mention by name the 
various methods—even the worth while objective ones used in behavioristic 
studies. We mention a few here to give you a little insight into their 
numbers. Many of the methods center around learning and retention— 
methods for studying the effects of drugs, hunger, thirst, loss of sleep, 
etc.—methods for studying conditions that affect the performance of acts 
after learning has been completed; methods for studying emotional re- 
actions, such as the various forms of free and controlled word reactions— 
galvanometric studies of emotional reaction. Methods for studying the 
relative strength of hunger and sex stimuli (Moss’ recent work). Methods 
of eliminating sense organs and parts of the brain in animals in order to 
determine sense organ roles and the rdle of various parts of the nervous 
system. (In work on humans in this field we have to wait for accident to 
prepare our subjects.) : 


The So-Called “Mental” Test as a Behavioristic Method 


During the past quarter of a century, in this country especially, there 
has grown up an enormous number of so-called mental tests. For a time 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR od 


it looked as though psychology would go test mad. Tests grew up with a 

mushroom-like growth only to flourish for a few days and then be revised 

by the next experimenter. Recent years have seen a gradual elimination 
a many of the tests and the gradual development and standardizing of a 
ew. 


Today these general types of tests are in common use: 


First Grade Intelligence Tests, 

Kindergarten Tests, 

Individual Will-Development Tests, 

“Intelligence” Tests: French, Latin, 
Sight-Singing, Arithmetic and 
Classification Tests, 

Self-Administering Tests of “Mental” Ability, 

Mechanical Aptitude Tests, 

Group Tests of “Mental” Ability. 

Employment Tests, 

Vocational Guidance Tests, 

Spelling and Reading Tests; Typewriting 
and Stenographic Tests. 


In building these tests hundreds of thousands of children and adults 
were used. One can but admire the patience and assiduity of the origi- 
nators of these tests. Once the test has been worked out it becomes a 
tool. The main purpose behind all testing is to find a measuring rod for 
classifying masses of individuals according to level of performance, ac- 
cording to age, and the like; to show up deficiencies and special abilities, 
racial and sex differences. 


Two rather wild ideas have grown up about tests: (1) The claim 
has been made that there is such a thing as “general” intelligence per se; 
and (2) that there are tests that enable one to differentiate “native” ability 
from acquired ability. To the behaviorist tests mean merely devices for 
grading and sampling human performance. 


Social Experimentation 


It can be seen at a glance that in all social experimentation we have 
two general procedures. (1) We attempt to answer the question “What 
would happen if we should make such and such changes in social situations ? 
We can’t be sure that we will be any better off, but anything is better than 


36 BEHAVIORISM 


what we have now. Let us make a change.” Usually social situations 
when they become intolerable cause us to dash blindly into action without 
arousing any verbal correlates such as I have indicated here. 


We can phrase the other procedure (2) as follows: “We want this 
individual or this group of individuals to do a certain thing, but we do 
not know just how to arrange a situation to get him to do it.” Here the 
procedure is somewhat different. Society experiments blindly by trial 
and error, but the reaction is known and approved. ‘The stimulus is 
manipulated not for the purpose of seeing what in general will happen 
but to bring about the specific action. You may not clearly see the differ- 
ence between the two types of procedure, but a few examples should clear 
it up. First we all must admit that social experimentation is going on at 
a very rapid rate at present—at an alarmingly rapid rate for comfortable, 
conventional souls. As an example of social experimentation under No. 1 
above, we have war. No one can predict what changes in reaction will be 
brought upon a nation when that nation goes to war. It is a blind manipu- 
lation of stimuli on a par with the experimentation of the child when he 
knocks down his house of blocks so patiently and laboriously constructed. 


Prohibition was only a blind rearrangement of a situation. The saloon 
brought a series of actions condemned by society. The conventional 
individuals in the community, without being able to make any reasonable 
prediction as to what would occur, tore down the whole of the old situa- 
tion and created a new one by ratifying the 18th Amendment. It is true 
that here they expected certain results—the doing away of drinking, the 
depletion of prisons of their inmates, a lessening of extra-marital inter- 
course, and the like. But any student of human nature or even of geog- 
raphy could have predicted that those results could not come although he 
might have been unable to predict what would occur. The result, except in 
the smaller towns, of course, has been quite contrary to these expectations. 
Certainly in and near the larger cities (where legal control is less effective 
and where public opinion is less of a factor in control) our prisons are 
more crowded today than ever. Crime is especially rampant, particularly 
homicidal crimes. The latter are beginning to arouse the concern of life 
insurance companies. One company in 1924 lost more than three quarters 
of a million dollars due to homicides alone. Then, too, thousands of 
citizens have been shot while engaged in rum running or have died from 
alcohol poisoning. In spite of it all, the prohibition law has been trampled 
under foot. With the successful breaking of this one law, fear of law has 
been removed; and when a taboo has been broken with impunity not only 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR Of 


does that particular taboo of the medicine man lose its grip, but all of the 
taboos of that particular medicine man tend to become ineffective. What 
occurred in primitive society occurs today. All laws are unquestionably 
more lightly esteemed, 


The destruction of the monarchy in Russia and the formation of a 
Soviet government is another example of blind manipulation of situa- 
tions. Neither friend nor foe could predict what changes in behavior 
would accrue. The fact is that this change has annihilated industrial prog- 
ress in Russia and has thrown back the intellectual and scientific progress 
of the Russian people possibly hundreds of years. Without further elabo- 
ration we can formulate several of these problems under our general 
scheme; 


Stimuli given Reaction—outcome—too 
complicated for prediction 
SIRE MON SE RIUUR MLCUNE SILI TUR na Un OY Bnet R 
Overthrow of monarchy; formation — fy 
of Soviet government 
War 5 
Prohibition c 
Easy divorce ° 
No marriage ° 


Children brought up in ignorance 


of their parents ts 
Substitution of physiological 

ethics for religion 2 
Equalization of wealth ° 
Elimination of ? 


hereditary wealth, etc. 


In this type of social experimentation society often plunges—does not feet 
its way out by means of small scale experimentations. It works with no 
definite experimental program in front of it. Its behavior often becomes 
mob-like which is another way of saying that the individuals composing 
the groups fall back upon infantile behavior. 


Similarly, social experimentation goes on in (Z) above. Here the 
reaction is already known and approved by society—marriage, continence 
in the unmarried, joining the church, the positive actions demanded in the 


38 BEHAVIORISM 


ten commandments and the like are examples of such approved reactions. 
Again we can summarize these in our formula: 


Geni SRA RhcbinaNet ye aL NAM ait ila R 

? Marriage under modern 
financial pressure 

4 Continence in great cities where 


social control is difficult 


Ng Joining the church 

. Truthfulness 

f Rapid acquisition of skill in a 
special line 

és Correct deportment etc. 


Our experimentation consists of setting up one set of stimuli after 
another until the given specified reaction follows from the correct grouping 
of stimuli. In trying to arrange these situations, society often works as 
blindly and as haphazardly as does the infra-human animal. Indeed if one 
were to characterize social experimentation in general during the past 2000 
years one would have to call it precipitous, infantile, unplanned, and say 
that when planned it is always in the interest of some nation, political 
group, sect or individual, rather than under the guidance of social scien- 
tists—-assuming their existence. Never, except possibly at certain periods 
of Grecian history, have we had even an educated ruling class. Our own 
country today is one of the worst offenders in history ruled as it is by 
professional politicians, labor propagandists and religious persecutors. 


May I call your attention here to the fact that behavioristic psy- 
chology, taking as it does its problems genetically and going from the 
simple to the more complex, is amassing a wealth of information on the 
reactions following stimuli and on the stimuli underlying given reactions, 
that will prove of inestimable benefit to society? Believing that his science 
is basal to the organization and control of society, the behaviorist has 
hoped that sociology may accept its principles and re-envisage its own 
problems in a more concrete way, 


What Can We Learn by Commonsense Observation? 


So far we have talked mainly about technical methods. Cannot we 
achieve a commonsense psychology personally helpful by merely watching 
people? The answer is yes, if we will observe them systematically and 
over a long enough period of time. Indeed every human being already has 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 39 


considerable organization in psychology whether he has studied it or not. 
Where would we be in our social life if we could not more or less confi- 
dently predict responses and puzzle out the possible effect of stimuli? The 
more observations you make upon other people, the better psychologist you 
become—the better you can get along with other people—and almost half 
the battle for a more sanely adjusted life comes from this ability to get 
along with people. One does not even have to become a student of condi- 
tioned responses, helpful as this study is, in order to learn practical psy- 
chology. 


I visited a man over the weekend to whom I promised to try to give 
a little helpful practical psychology. He had not been getting along too 
well in his work. Monday morning he arose, sore and sleepy from the 
strenuous exercises engaged in over the weekend. He groaned aloud and 
complained about the unsatisfactory character of all vacations and was 
just about ready to take a mournful shave and a hot bath. I said to him, 
“Sling your arms and legs about a bit and do your daily dozen and take a 
tepid bath. This will set you up.” This verbal stimulus led to the act. 
He went down to breakfast feeling fit. But his eggs were overdone. He 
was just ready to “call” the maid but I noticed a certain stiffening of her 
body and a certain snappiness to her words much as though she said, “I 
don’t like weekend guests anyway and it serves you both right.” I whis- 
pered to my host, “Have a care; the Irish biddy is just fretting to go ona 
rampage. You had better call your wife up by phone when she wakes up 
and let her scold the cook.” 


We rushed for the train only to miss it by twenty seconds. He 
stamped his feet and cursed and said aloud, “This is the first time in three 
months that train has been on time.” His reactions were almost infantile 
in character. He calmed down finally and we took a later train to the 
office. His whole tone was lowered as anyone could observe by watching 
him. His day had started wrong. Previous commonsense observation 
had given me, as a behaviorist, a store of data to predict that with his 
temperament his day might go very wrong indeed, considering the start 
he had. This situation called out from me the overt verbal response: 
“You'll have to watch your step all day with the people you come in contact 
with or you'll hurt somebody’s feelings and make a worse ending to a day 
that started badly,” 


This gave him a new start. He smiled when his secretary handed him 
the mail. He plunged into his work. It gripped him and soon he was lost 
to the world in the technical duties for which he is peculiarly fitted. When 
lunch time came he slackened up in his work and I happened to hear his 


40 BEHAVIORISM 


voice raised in protest while talking with one of his associates. Observa- 
tion of his family life over the weekend had taught me a lot. I was able 
to predict what the probable situation was that was upsetting him. I 
thought I could again change his world for him, and I said, “It’s too bad 
you didn’t ask your wife to come in to town and have lunch with us today. 
I heard her break her date yesterday for lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, 
(his wife, much to his distress, being particularly friendly with Mr. Jones) 
while you were out tuning up the car.’ Being an unpsychological person, 
his relief was obvious and his next hour was his best. 


If I had the time, I could take you over his whole business day and 
back to his home life in the evening. Without asking him to introspect 
or psychologize or psycho-analyze himself, I could detect his weak spots, 
his strong points, where he went wrong with his children, where he went 
wrong with his wife. 


Would you think it strange if I said that the behaviorist by training 
him both in principles and in particulars, could almost remake this very 
intelligent individual in a few weeks’ time? Would you think it boastful 
if I stated that the behaviorist claims that his psychology is one which has 
hopes of entering deeply into the life of every individual at every point? 


But you say, “I am not a psychologist—I cannot go following people 
around telling them to go easy here and hard there.”’ This is true but are 
you sure of yourself? Has behaviorism nothing to teach you about your 
own life? I think you will admit that you have a lot to learn but you 
would not try to lay bricks on your own house until you had learned how 
to lay bricks. ‘So with personal psychology you have to watch other 
people day by day—you have to systematise and classify your data—throw 
them into logical moulds—and verbalize your results, e. g. “George Mar- 
shall is the quietest man I know. He is always even-tempered and he 
always speaks in a low even tone. I wonder if I could learn how to talk 
like a gentleman.” This verbal’ formulation serves you as a stimulus 
(implicit kinaesthetic word stimulus). It may lead to a changed response; 
for words whether spoken by others or spoken subvocally in your own 
throat are just as strong stimuli, lead just as swiftly to action, as hurtling 
stones, threatening clubs and sharp knives. 


If I were an experimental ethicist I’d point out to you the importance 
of maxims—how potently cut and dried verbal formulae serve as stimuli 
for shaping our own reactions. This is especially true when those formulae 
are handed down by persons in authority—by parents, teachers, advisers. 
Again, if we were studying ethics, I’d point out to you the reasonableness 


HOW TO STUDY HUMAN BEHAVIOR 41 


of arriving at such formulations from your own abundant observation, 
rather than blindly accepting them second hand. But, I think, I would 
just as quickly tell you not to reject the results of these collective social 
experiments—now crystallized into verbal formulae and handed down 
from father to son and from mother to daughter, until your own tentative 
and small scale social experimentation has given you more trustworthy 
formulations. In other words, I am trying in this early lecture to convince 
you that the behaviorist is not a reactionist—not against anything or for 
anything until it has been tried out and established like other scientific 
formulations. 


To know what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for the human organism—to know 
how to guide man’s conduct on experimentally sound lines is beyond us at 
present. We know far too little of the makeup of the human body and its 
needs to be dogmatic in our prescription or in our proscriptions, 


iil 
THE HUMAN BODY 


What It Is Made Of, How It Is Put Together, 
and How It Works 


Part I. The Structures That Make Behavior Possible. 


NTRODUCTION :—In this lecture and in the next we have what many 

think is a difficult task—to learn something about the way the human 
body is put together and the way it works. Does it seem ridiculous to try 
to do this in the course of a lecture or two? Let us give it a fair trial. 
You may be surprised to find how accurate a picture of the body you can 
get in even one single hour. 


The behaviorist is interested in the way the whole body works: If you 
will pick up a physiology or an anatomy you will find that the human body 
is studied part by part—the digestive apparatus, the circulatory apparatus, 
the respiratory apparatus, the nervous system, and soon. The physiologist 
has to carry out his experimental work first upon one organ and then upon 
another. The student of human behavior, by contrast, works with the 
whole body in action. It would be possible for him to carry out his studies 
without any knowledge of the separate parts whatsoever, but we do not 
need to work thus blindly. The study of the body is helpful to the be- 
haviorist. Let us borrow as many helpful things as we can from phy- 
siology. 


While the whole body can do many things, there are very definite 
limitations to its possibilities of functioning and these limitations are due 
to the material out of which the body is composed and to the way that 
material is put together. I mean by this merely that there is a limit to the 
speed with which we can run; to the loads which we can lift; to the length 
of time we can go without food and without sleep and without water; 
that the body needs special types of food—that it can endure only a certain 
amount of heat for a certain length of time, or a certain amount of cold 
for a definite period ; that it must be supplied with oxygen and other special 
materials. Even an hour’s study will convince you that the human body, 
while beautifully put together to do many things, is not a treasure house of 
mystery but a very commonsense kind of organic machine (and by organic 
machine we mean something many millions of times more complicated than 
anything man has yet succeeded in making). 


42 


THE HUMAN BODY 43 


Should We as Behaviorists Be Especially Interested in the Central 
Nervous System? Because he places emphasis on the facts of adjustment 
of the whole organism rather than upon the working of parts of the body, 
the behaviorist is often accused of not making a place in his scheme for 
the nervous system. To understand why it hurts the feelings of the intro- 
spectionist for the behaviorist to place no more emphasis on the brain and 
the spinal cord than upon the striped muscles of the body, the plain muscles 
of the stomach, the glands, etc., you must remember that the nervous 
system to the introspectionist has always been a mystery box—whatever 
he couldn’t explain in “mental” terms he pushed over into the brain. Many 
of our so-called physiological psychologies are filled with pretty pictures of 
brain and spinal cord schemes. As a matter of fact we do not yet know 
enough about the functioning of brain and spinal cord to draw diagrams 
~ about their functions. For the behaviorist the nervous system is, Ist, a part 
‘of the body—no more mysterious than muscles and glands; 2nd, it is a 
specialized body mechanism that enables its possessor to react more 
quickly and in a more integrated way with muscles or glands when acted 
upon by a given stimulus than would be the case if no nervous system 
were present. There are many animals and free swimming plants without 
nervous systems. Their range of adjustment is limited and their reactions 
to touch, light, sound, etc., are slow. You can react almost instantly with 
your hand when any part of your body is touched. The nervous system 
speeds up the passage of the message (known scientifically as a propagated 
disturbance) from the sense organ (where the stimulus is applied) to the 
reacting organ (the muscles and glands). Where there is no nervous 
system the message still travels but it travels slowly, 


This discussion should show you that the behaviorist has to be vitally 
interested in the nervous system but only as an integral part of the whole 
body. 


Different Types of Cells and Tissues 
That Make up the Body 


What is the Body Made Of? Nearly everyone knows today that 
the body is composed only of cells and the products that the cells manu- 
facture. But what is acell? The cell is a minute portion of living sub- 
stance—most cells are so small that they can be seen only under a high 


eens 
a 


44 BEHAVIORISM 


power microscope. It is enclosed usually by a membrane. The cell as 
a whole always contains a mass of protoplasm (a very complex chemical 
substance) in which granules of various kinds may be seen (possibly 
stored products which may be used for food for the cell or for secretion). 
Each cell contains a small oval nucleus (or more than one). The nucleus 
contains a network of so-called chromatin material (material which takes 
on a characteristic stain when certain dyes are used on it). The nucleus 
in some way presides over the whole activity of the cell. Many cells main- 
tain their characteristic appearance throughout the life of the organisms. 
Others are obscured soon by their outgrowths or processes or by the very 
materials which they themselves secrete. 


If your skill in chemistry and physics and physiology had gone far 
enough and you were called upon to build a human body what different 
kinds of cells would you use and into what kinds of patterns (elementary 
tissues) would you weave these cells? 


It has been found that four different kinds of cells and their products 
form the four fundamental tissues of the body. These four fundamental 
tissues enter into various combinations to form every organ of the body, 
such as skin, heart, lungs, brain, muscles, stomach, glands, etc. 


(1) Cells for Covering the Body and Lining All Openings: In the 
first place you would want cells which you could weave into a membrane 
to cover the whole of the body—to form the outside layers of the skin. 
In places you would want to modify the cells in this tissue to form the 
nails of the fingers and toes and the hair and the teeth. In other places 
such as the glassy window of the eye ball (the cornea) you would want 
to modify the cells of this tissue so that they would admit light. Then 
you would want to line all of the inside tubes and cavities, such as the whole 
of the alimentary tract—mouth, back of throat, stomach, small intestines, 
large intestines ; you would want to line the blood vessels and the openings 
in the brain (ventricles and spinal canal). You would want to form or 
weave these tissues into the structures we call glands and to modify the cells 
again so that they would secrete fluids—such as tears, sweat, wax, saliva, 
and dozens of other fluids and chemicals which the body needs for its own 
use or which the body must excrete or get rid of. Let us call the 
cells we use for these purposes (1) epithelial cells, and the tissues they 
form epithelial tissue. We shall see further on that we shall need very 
highly specialized forms of these epithelial cells to furnish the sensitive 


THE HUMAN BODY 45 


element in each of our sense organs. Fig. 1 shows some individual epi- 
thelial cells and Fig, 2 a gland made up of them. 





rs 
a 
Ks. 
Ss & ) 
i fi 
Seances, 
“a y <™ C + . Ls 
oa, yi. Vas VF o> 
~ “aX aA te (er 
“in i 24 fe po 


Epithelial cells put together 
to form asmall sland 





‘Two types of epithelial cells Fig. a 


(2) Cells That Form Tissue for Supporting and Connecting Bodily 
Parts: You could not go very far in constructing man with one type of 
cell and the tissue it forms. You would quickly need strong tissue for 
tying the bodily parts together. You would want heavy elastic tendons to 
attach muscles to. You would want strong cartilages to give form to 
your nose and to hold your windpipe open. During the embryonic (intra- 
uterine) life of your infant you would need sturdy framework upon which 
mineral salts could be deposited for forming bones (after the bones 
are formed by these deposits the connective-tissue framework disappears). 
You would want to sheathe your bones with a tough fibrous coating (peri- 
osteum) and to put buffers where bones come together and you would 
want very strong tough fibres (white fibro-cartilage) to tie the moveable 
bones together. All of this supporting connective framework is made 
up of connective-tissue cells. The tissues themselves are called connective 
tissues (cartilage and bone, elastic, fibrous, areolar). Fig. 3 shows two 
connective-tissue cells that enter into the structure of the bones, 


(3) Cells That Form Our Muscular Tissues: We would want to 
build our human so that it would go from place to place; so that its heart 
could beat and it could breathe; so that its stomach could get smaller or 
larger, its blood vessels could expand or contract—in other words, we 


46 BEHAVIORISM 


need to provide locomotion for the body as a whole and for changes in the 
shape and size of many of the hollow internal organs (e. g. the stomach 
must vary considerably in size; the blood vessels have to vary in size). 
To perform all of the varied muscular functions of the body we need really 
two kinds of muscular cells and two kinds of tissue. i 





Cannective tissue cells (steoblasts) 
F pe 3 


(a) Striped or Skeletal Muscle Cells and Striped Muscle Tissue: 
The striped muscle cells are on the average about 1/500 of an inch in 
diameter. They are often an inch or more in length. The cells are uni- 
form throughout their length and there is no branching’. The cell is made 
up of alternate dark and light stripes which run across the length of the 
cell. This gives the cell its name—cross striated or striped. Like all 
other cells, muscle cells are supplied with a nucleus—usually with several 
nuclei. Over each cell is a tough connective-tissue membrane (called sar- 
colemma). It usually takes hundreds and thousands of these cells to form 
a single muscle (striped muscle tissue). Over the muscles as a whole 
there is also a well marked connective-tissue sheath (called the epimysium). 
Intermixed with muscle one finds the blood vessels which feed them. 





t In the heart we have striped muscle of a slightly different type. Here the individual cells 
are short and show short intercommunicating branches. Since this type of muscle is found 
only in the heart and is responsible for the rhythmic beat of the heart, we shall have very 
little further to say about it. Hereafter throughout these lectures where we speak of 
striped muscles we shall mean (a) above. 


THE HUMAN BODY 47 


This is 

Fig 4 the way the 
§ ; vA y__nerve fibre or axone = great muscles 
PAE REE Cra , such as_ the 
biceps of the 
arm, the mus- 
cles of the leg 
RULED? AE eeeE ETT and. tieten ke 
eA FRO it tongue, the 
SA So Ee six big mus- 
cles that con- 





Bis 


Parts of two stnpec muscles trol the eye 
cells shown with motor nerve are made up. 
endings Our striped 


muscles are 


used when- 
ever movement has to be rapid or where big masses have to be moved. 


Fig. 4 shows part of two individual striped muscle cells and the way 
the motor nerve fibres enter them. 


(b) The Unstriped 
or Smooth Muscle Cells and 
Smooth Muscle Tissue: 
The cells which go to make 
up the wunstriped smooth 
muscle tissue are thin, 





Smooth muscle cell with a 


herve tibre entering it . The dark elongated, almost hairlike 
portion in the center is the nucleus SULUCULES ums SEOn Hig he. Oc 
These cells are grouped into 

F S layers to form muscular 

g ; coats. Unstriped muscular 


tissue forms the chief mus- 
cular coat of the stomach, intestines, the bladder, sex organs, the iris of 
the eye (for opening and closing of the pupil), the walls of ducts (tubes ) 
leading from glands, and the arteries and veins. 


The Nerve Cells and Nervous Tissue: We still need one other type 
of cell and the tissue formed from it to perfect our human being. The 
human animal (as well as all other higher vertebrates) must be able to 
respond quickly and complexly to stimuli. We know that stimuli are 
effective only when applied to an appropriate sense organ. We know 
that the animal must respond with either striped or unstriped muscles, 
with glands, or with combinations of these. Oftentimes the point where 


48 BEHAVIORISM 


dendrites 





(<=>—collateral or 
i side branch 





A axone ending in 
awe 7 & striped muscle 


Fig.6 


One type of neurone—the lower motor neurone 
(After Barker) 


THE HUMAN BODY 49 


the Sensory stimulus is applied is very far distant from the point where 
the reaction takes place. For example, we may run a thorn into our foot. 
Immediately we stop, bend over with our trunk, grasp the thorn with our 
fingers and pull it out. This reaction could not take place unless we had 
specially differentiated and highly developed nerve cells with their pro- 
cesses—put together in such a way as to form an actual neural pathway 
extending from the skin of the foot into the spinal cord, then up the 
spinal cord to the brain, from the brain back to the spinal cord and from 
the spinal cord out to the muscles of the trunk, hand and fingers. Nerve 
cells and their processes are the only bodily structures capable of connect- 
ing sense organ with muscle in this speedy, intimate way. 


So far as general structure goes, nerve cells are not very different 
from other cells in the body. Each nerve cell consists of a cell body with 
its outgrowths or processes—sometimes the processes are few in number ; 
sometimes there are hundreds of them. If we take as our example a cell 
from the spinal cord (Fig. 6) (so-called lower motor neurone), we find a 
large cell body with a nucleus. Growing out from the cell we find many 
short branches closely matted around the cell body. These are called 
dendrites because they look like the branches of a tree. At one point a 
slender fibre leaves the cell and extends for a longer or shorter distance 
(it may vary in length from the merest fraction of an inch to several 
feet). This slender process is called an axone or axis-cylinder. Often 
during its course it throws out side branches called collaterals. A fatty 
sheath (called the medullary sheath) clothes the whole of the axis-cylinder 
with its collaterals (for details of axone, see Fig. 7). This fatty 


nodes(of Ranvier) axis cylinder 
medullary sheath 


Fig. 7 









A diagram of a part of a nerve fibre 


The axis cylinder, consisting of a large number of very fine fibrils, makes 
up the center of the nerve fibre. The dark outside portion represents the 
medullary sheath. At certain definite intervals the medullary sheath is con- 
stricted. These constricted portions are called “‘nodes’” (of Ranvier). 


sheath is not present on the dendrites. The whole structure so far 
described is the cell with its processes. The cell with all of these processes 
is usually called a neurone. There are many forms of these cells, some 


50 BEHAVIORISM 


with only a single 
process such as the 
afferent neurones 
of the spinal cord 
(those that connect 


the sense organs 
Another type of neurone the so with the spinal 


called sensory or atferent neurone <A eord ttroredennta 


It has no dendrites—one branch of the axone ends in the i f 
sense organ. The other branch ends in the central nervous of this ty ES : 
system (brain or spinal cord). meurone see Fig. 


8). The neurone is the unit of all nervous tissue such as we find the brain 
and spinal cord made up of. 





Fig.8 







ucleus 
cell body 


axone, central branch 







axone,sense 
organ branch 





The dendrites serve as receiving stations to pick up the various nerve 
impulses. The impulses pass through the cell body, down the axis-cylinder 
and the collaterals. The asris-cylinder of one neurone always ends by 
contact around the dendrites of another neurone (in neurones that lie 
wholly in the brain and cord). The neural impulse thus passes from cell 
body to axis-cylinder and down the axis-cylinder to the dendrites of the 
next neurone, etc. Thus there is always forward or one way conduction 
in the nervous system, 


The Principal Organs of the Body. 


These Elementary Tissues Grouped Together Form the Various 
Organs of the Body: So far in our discussion we have talked only of 
cells and the elementary tissues they form. We must now take up some 
of the organs made up of these tissues. For our purposes we need to 
consider only a few: (1) The sense organs—where the various stimuli 
produce their effect on the body; (2) the reacting organs—the whole 
system of muscles and glands; (3) the nervous or conducting organs, 
that connect sense organs with reacting organs—they are the brain, 
spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. By peripheral nerves we mean nerves 
that run outside in the body from sense organs to brain and spinal cord, 
and nerves that leave the brain and cord to end (directly) in striped 
muscles and (indirectly) in smooth muscles and glands. 


Your study of the elementary tissues already has taken you a long 
way towards understanding these organs. They are made up wholly of 
combinations of the four types of cells and their tissues which you have 
already studied. For example, in the muscular system you will find con- 


THE HUMAN BODY | 51 


nective tissue covering each muscle cell, you will find epithelial tissue and 
nervous tissue. Let us spend a short time upon the general features in 
each of these groups of organs. 


General Grouping of Organs or Structures: Let us first group the 
organs we are most in need of studying: 


1. The sense organs—where the various stimuli produce their effect 
on the body. 


2. The reacting organs—consisting of (a) the striped muscular 
system that moves the skeleton (and the heart) ; (b) the unstriped 
muscular system of the viscera; (c) glands. 


3. The nervous system. It connects the sense organs with the react- 
ing organs. It consists of the brain, spinal cord and the peripheral 
nerves which run from sense organs into brain and spinal cord, 
and from brain and cord to muscles and glands. 


The General Plan of the Sense Organs: The general plan of a sense 
organ is quite simple and almost uniform. Of course all sense organs 
contain connective tissue for giving them form—blood vessels for supply- 
ing them with nourishment, and muscular fibres of both the striped and 
unstriped for adjusting them for the reception of stimuli. All of them 
except sensory nerve endings in muscle and tendon contain epithelial tissue. 
All of them contain nervous tissue. 


These epithelial cells in the sense organs are most astonishing struc- 
tures. Possibly the most interesting of the whole body. They are sensi- 
tive (in general) only to one form of stimulation (selectively sensitive). 
For example, the two types of epithelial elements in the eye sensitive to 
light are called rods and cones, see Fig. 9. The nervous connecting ele- 
ments (true optic nerve) end around the rods and cones. In the ear there 
is a whole group of these specialized epithelial cells— (1) a cell that runs 
across the bony cavity of the inner ear (called basilar membrane fibre) ; 
(2) on this are to be found a pair of cells placed so as to form arches, 
called arches of Corti; (3) on either side of the arches of Corti there is a 
group of epithelial cells called hair cells (inner and outer row). It is 
around these hair cells that the nervous elements end (auditory nerve). 
This group of structures as a whole vibrates when a tone of a certain 
wave length is sounded (it is best not to attempt now to go into theories 
about the functioning of the ear). The muscle spindles (the sense organs 


IZ 


Fig 


BEHAVIORISM 





E pithelial and nerve 
elements in the eye 


F pithelial cells 


in the eye 


Nerve elements 
in the eye 


THE HUMAN BODY 53 


in the muscles, see Fig. 10) act only when the muscle has been shortened 
or lengthened by the 
motor nerves; the 
taste buds act when a 
fluid (sapid sub- 
stance) reaches them; 
the olfactory cells 
only when gaseous 
particles strike them; 
the semi-circular 
‘ canals only when head 
fe 19.10 movements disturb the 
it fluids in the inner 
ear; the cells in the 
skin are selectively sensitive to (i. e. are stimulated by) several forms of 
stimuli—certain ones are stimulated by gentle touch (hairs, Meissner 
corpuscles) ; others by sharp cuts, pricks, electric shocks( here of course 
the nerve endings may be directly stimulated); others are stimulated by 
warm objects; others by cold objects. Possibly still others by light stroking 
(called “tickling,” “itching,” etc.), 






A Sensory nerve endin 
in & Striped muscle cell 


Let us conveniently group these facts: 


Sense organ: Stimulated by: 
(Visual sense) Ty eee CE Ch ee .Ether vibration 
(Auditory sense) PUA P COGIICA) Cuts eww ee Air waves 
(Olfactory sense) PN OSEUEe eens rete Oy, Gaseous particles 
(Gustatory sense) Rong ue ee oe Sapid fluids 
(Dermal sense — ped eH en Ue ka ah eek WE aaah 


a— temperature 


Warm objects 
Cold objects 


b— pressure Contact with any object 
c— pain) Cutting, burning, pricking 
(So-called ' Musclestun 2a Change in position of muscle 
kinaesthetic sense) PRON CONS. oeak i Caan aati Change in position of tendon 
(Equilibration sense) Ear (semi-circular canals)......Change in position of head 


What happens when the appropriate stimuli strikes or impinges upon 
a given sense organ? Some kind of physical and chemical change takes 
place in the epithelial cell. Wet us look upon these cells constituting the 
sense organs then as physico-chemical workshops. There are lots of 
simple things in your own experience that may help to make this clear: 
When light strikes a photographic plate it (the silver salts) turns black. 


54 BEHAVIORISM 


When you take the damper off the strings of your piano and sing middle 
C the middle C string begins to “speak” without your having to touch 
the keyboard (so-called sympathetic vibration). 


This physico-chemical process set going in the sense organ by the 
stimulus, starts another process going. Jt sets up a neural impulse in the 
nerve ending which 1s in contact with the epithelial cell; this nervous 
impulse travels over a chain of neurones to the central nervous system 
(brain and spinal cord) and then out somewhere to a muscle or gland. 


We have now talked about the organs where stimuli produce their 
effect upon the body (sense organs or receptor organs). Let us now turn 
to the muscular and glandular organs which move in response to sense 
organ activity. Later, after finishing our study of the responding side of 
our body (muscles and glands—called effector organs) we will come back 
to the nervous system which forms the pathway or bridge between sense 
organs and effector organs, 


Organs of Response—Muscles and Glands 


Introduction: J will try to give you in order a very sketchy picture 
of the more important organs of response. They are: (1) the striped or 
skeletal muscular system; (2) the unstriped muscular system; (3) the 
glandular system. If it were not for these structures the body could not 
do anything—could not even take care of itself. 


The Skeletal Muscles: ‘The striped or skeletal muscular system makes 
up the principal mass of our body. Strip away the skin upon your arms, 
legs or trunk, and you come immediately upon layers and layers of striped 
muscles. The variety of arrangement seems endless and confusing and 
yet each muscle in this system has a definite task to do. You have been 
in the habit of calling these “voluntary muscles’—subject to the “will,” 
but if you study their action you will soon discover that what you “will” 
to do is to raise your arm or crook your finger, to hop, run or bend your 
trunk. Now a whole system of muscles responds when each of those acts 
is accomplished. The muscles always work in large groups. For example, 
you may reach up to pull down the window shade. You think of the arm 
and fingers as being the active moving members. But the muscles all 
over the body are taking part. The whole body has to take on a new Set 
or attitude before you can do this simple act. The next moment you stoop 
over to pick up a pin. There is a rapid shift in every muscle of the body. 


No discussion of the skeletal muscles can be complete without some 
reference to the bones of the body with which the muscles collaborate so 


THE HUMAN BODY Bo 


closely. In our body there are about 200 bones. Some of these bones 
form rigid joints with their neighbors—as the bones of the skull. Others 
form semi-mobile points capable of a small amount of movement—such 
as the bones encasing the spinal cord and our ribs. Still others, like the 
elbow joints, the knee, shoulder and hip are joined in such a way that 
movement in one direction or several directions is possible. Our striped 
muscles are attached to these bones by connective tissue (which we have 
already studied). Most of the muscles are attached at one end to one bone 
and at the other end (directly or through tendons) to a contiguous bone. 
They thus cross one joint and a lever is created. The principle of the lever 
is widely utilized in our bodily construction. Some of our movements 
require the whole body to be raised slowly a short distance, as when we 
stand on the ball of the foot and raise the body. Other movements require 
great speed through a wide are as the movements of the arms in boxing, 


Each of these muscles or muscle groups that tend to move our limbs 
in a given direction—e. g. to flex or bend the elbow (flexors )—has another 
opposed set of muscles which tend to extend the arm or keep it straight 
(extensors). Usually the muscles are kept under some slight tension due 
to motor impulses coming constantly from the brain or spinal cord. This 
is proven by the fact that when the belly of a resting muscle is cut across, 
the two ends draw away from each other. This tension in both a muscle 
and its antagonist tends to make our movements very fine and smooth. 
When the motor nerve impulse sent from the brain or cord results in 
raising the arm, the flexors contract (shorten); but at the same time 
there occurs a lessening of the tension in the antagonistic muscles. When 
a given muscular contraction has taken place the muscle gradually assumes 
its normal size and shape (relaxation), | 


How efficient are our muscles as working machines?- Careful tests 
have shown that the muscular system as a machine for work is quite as 
efficient as the steam engine. The net efficiency as determined by the 
Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution is given at slightly 
above 21%, The steam engine has a net efficiency of about 15 - 25%, 


The food of the muscle:- The well nourished muscle contains a 
quantity of stored food brought in by the blood. In the blood this food 
has the form of blood sugar. Muscle tissue has the power to convert this 
blood sugar into glycogen (so-called animal starch). This food stored 
in the muscle in the form of glycogen is gradually used up when the 
muscle goes into action. After this stored supply is used up, the muscle 
is dependent upon the blood sugar brought in by the blood for its further 


56 BEHAVIORISM 


supply. The ductless glands help increase the food supply to the muscles 
as I shall show you later. 


Waste products and fatigue of muscle:- As muscle work is done 
chemical changes take place in the muscle. Carbon dioxide is formed, 
lactic and other acids are formed. Many so-called “fatigue products” are 
formed. Finally the muscle can no longer do work. The ductless glands 
here also come to the aid of the muscles by neutralizing the fatigue pro- 
ducts (and by increasing the blood supply of the working muscle so that 
fatigue products are more rapidly washed away). Probably the most 
important process in working is the using up of stored food material. 


Muscle Strain:- A muscle which has been contracted until it can 
no longer do work will contract again after a short rest. The rest allows 
time for the blood to wash away fatigue products and to bring in a fresh 
food supply. If the muscle has been greatly over-exercised—strained— 
the period of recovery is very slow indeed. The muscle itself, however, 
is rarely injured by over-exercise beyond, at least, the point where repair 
can take place. 


The effect of exercise: An unused muscle rapidly weakens and may 

even atrophy. Lack of exercise means lack of good circulation and lack 
of good circulation means a deficient supply of nutrition and insufficient 
elimination of waste products. All hygienists today recognize the im- 
portance of exercise in keeping the muscles in good condition. To the 
busiest men and women they recommend simple setting up exercises, to 
others more severe drills. To those with more leisure, outdoor games. To 
those who engage steadily in activities where a fixed group of muscles are 
used they recommend daily exercises which will call the other muscles of 
the body into play. Social institutions like life insurance companies and 
business organizations are providing facilities for regular muscular exer- 
cise. There is general recognition that the tone of the muscle which is 
heightened by exercise is conductive to the general well being of the body, 
especially of the all important internal organs. There is little question 
that the heeding of the advice “to exercise often and sensibly” is helping 
to keep older men and women young for a much longer time than was 
formerly the case; and to keep even the younger men and women supple 
and graceful. 


The behaviorist is especially interested in these facts because stressing 
the behavior side as he does he believes that supple, well nourished mus- 
cles, regardless of the absolute age of the individual, prolong the period 
of training—increase really the span of youth. 


THE HUMAN BODY 57 


The system of plain or unstriped muscles:- The smooth or plain 
unstriped muscles—that enter so largely into the formation of our internal 
organs—are less familiar to you than are the striped muscles. Before 
discussing them, let us get a clear picture of what we mean by viscera—a 
term which is playing an ever wider role in behavioristic psychology. The 
viscera are playing this wider role because we are increasingly realizing 
that changes in these organs often serve as stimuli to many of the major 
reactions of the whole body. Often we can assign no verbal reason for 
a reaction. When this is the case the stimulus to that act probably must 
be sought for in the viscera (change in their. shape or size or chemical 
condition). 


Let us extend the usual meaning of viscera to include the mouth, the 
pharynx, the oesophagus, the stomach, the small intestines, the large intes- 
tine, the heart, the lungs, the diaphragm, the arteries and veins, the blad- 
der, the urinary and anal passages; the sex organs; the liver, spleen, pan- 
creas, kidneys, and all the other glands of the body. This is not a strictly 
scientific classification but we are in need of a term in psychology which 
will include all our inside organs. 


Smooth or plain muscle tissue dominates this field with the exception 
of the glands which I shall come to in a moment.? 


Many of the visceral organs are hollow (they are sometimes called 
the hollow organs). These hollow organs are always filled or partially 
filled with something; stomach (food), lungs (air), heart, arteries and 
blood vessels (blood), small intestine (digested food undergoing absorp- 
tion), large intestine (waste products on the way towards elimination), 
bladder (urine and other fluid wastes), etc. This is one reason why the 
hollow organs are so important—they are always “quarreling” because 
they are too full or too empty—their contents are constantly in motion, 
constantly changing. Hence they are constantly reacting and each reaction 
sets up a visceral stimulus that may drive the whole body into action. Let 
me illustrate. The walls of the stomach are lined with several layers of 
plain muscle. When food is present producing normal extension of the 
stomach walls the muscles are quiet. Now in a few hours time in the 
adult the food begins to pass into the small intestine. This leaves the 
stomach empty. Immediately it begins to contract rhythmically. These 
rhythmical contractions (called hunger contractions) make us search for 
food—men have been known to steal or even kill to get food Fig. 11 
shows the whole alimentary tract—mouth, stomach, small and large intes- 
tines. Fig. 12 shows a cross section of this tract at the level of the stomach. 


1 Do not forget that in the viscera we also have connective tissue, epithelial tissue and nervous 
tissue. Smooth muscle tissue at least quantitatively dominates these organs. 


58 BEHAVIORISM 





—————=e Stomach 


small intestine 


large intestine 


= 


Diagram of alimentary tract 


Fig. 


The reverse process 
takes place in the bladder 
and in the colon—when 
these hollow organs get 
too full their distended 
walls serve as powerful 
stimuli to overt reaction 
— causing us to seek 
places where evacuation 
may take place. Disten- 
sion of the seminal duct 
may lead to sex activity 
in the male.* 

Fluttering of the 
heart, palpitation, drop- 
ping of beats of the 
heart, may lead to overt 
action—lack of oxygen, 
heat, cold, etc., may lead 
to marked changes in the 
movements of our dia- 
phragm and lungs. 

I think I have said 
enough about these 
smooth muscle organs to 
show you that thousands 
of responses are going 
on in them every second, 
and that every one of 
these visceral responses 
may also serve as a stim- 
ulus (since the viscera 
are lined also with sense 
organ structures) for 
calling out general bodily 
activity—i.e., they may 
start activity in the 
striped muscles. 


2 In the case of the female there seems to be no pressure or lack of pressure which leads to 
sex activity in the same way. But we know that in the females of many mammals there is 
seasonal rut and in the human female there is a menstrual period every lunar month. Prob- 
ably in the case of the female there are certain glandular secretions (probably of the duct- 
less glands) during the formation of the egg which may set up periodic or rhythmical changes 


THE HUMAN BODY of 





Layerot longrtudi naf 
Smooth muscle fibres 


Layer of circular 
smooth muscle tibres 
Layer ot clandular 


tissue (digestive & lands) 


aren or cavity of 
Stomach 


Diagram of cross section of stomach 


Fig.l 


Our “environment”—our world of stimuli—is thus not only one of 
external objects, sights, sounds and smells; it is one of internal objects as 
well—hunger contractions, bladder distensions, palpitating heart, rapid 
breathing, muscular changes and the like 


You probably think that I have got a long way off from my subject— 
of telling you about smooth muscles. I have purposely avoided going 
into detail. The way the smooth muscle enters into all of these organs 
is too much of a subject for us to try to gain a foothold in tonight. I 
have, I hope, given you a more or less faithful, though brief, picture of 
what the smooth muscles are doing in our body. I'll add just another 
thought—we find smooth muscles in the skin—they are responsible for 
“goose-flesh” ; we find them in the eye, altering the diameter of the pupil; 


in smooth muscles which may serve as stimuli to sex activity. I bring out these facts to 
show that the unconditioned stimulus to sex activity in the case of the female is probably 
much less definite than in the case of the male. ‘There is probably thus a reason physio- 
logically sound which will account for the difference in sex standards between the human 
male and female—a difference now not so clearly marked as in former times. 

Please do not confuse the issue here between a conditioned response and an unconditioned 
one, Both males and females become sex conditioned to visual, auditory and other stimuli. 
The sight of the male’s hat may stir the woman as much as the bonnet may stir the male. 





1 These powerful visceral stimuli have been called “drives” by_a good many psychologists. This 
is becoming vitalistic in order to be dramatic. Professor R. S. Woodworth of Columbia has 
especially sinned in this direction, 


60 BEHAVIORISM 


we find them attached to hairs even in the human animal and we find 
them in many other parts of the body. | 

The physiology of plain muscle differs in many particulars from that 
of striped muscle. The main facts are alike. We have the phenomena 
of contraction, relaxation, latent period and summation. 


In our next lecture we will talk about structures that are fast becom- 
ing of general popular interest—the glands. 


IV 


THE HUMAN BODY, Cont. 


What It Is Made Of, How It Is Put Together, 
and How It Works 


PART II. The Role the Glands Play in Everyday Behavior 


[TE Glands as Reacting Organs: You may not think at first of the 

glands as being of especial importance as reacting organs. But hig Ml 
peel an onion in your presence or release tear gas you may stand stock 
still but your eyes begin to drip water. Likewise if pain stimulation be- 
comes intense tears begin to flow. Tear responses may become condi- 
tioned—sad news may cause a copious flow of tears—the mere sight of 
the doctor may bring honest tears to the eyes of the three-year-old. This 
type of reaction, feigned or real, has saved many of us from just chas- 
tisement at the hands of our parents; has filled the tin cups of beggars 
and won many elections for politicians. Tears of females have more than 
once swayed the fate of empires. 


If I place you in a hot room, the sweat glands in your skin begin to 
work; again your mouth may water, or become dry, owing to excess or 
deficient secretion of the salivary glands. You can begin to see at least 
that glands are organs with which we behave—that they are important 
organs of reaction. They are closely associated with the viscera—they 
really form part of the visceral system. They are not primarily muscular 
crgans (although some smooth muscle fibres may be present). I brought 
out the fact, you will remember, on page 44 that glands are really organs 
made up of highly specialized epithelial tissue. Instead of contracting as 
striped and smooth muscles do when they react, the glands secrete. 


Duct Glands :- It would take us too far afield tonight to discuss in 
detail all of the varieties of glands, how they are made up and how they 
function. Let us divide the glands into duct and ductless glands. Duct 
glands have a little opening or tube that leads from the gland to the out- 
side of the body (e.g. the sweat glands) or that leads into the hollow 
viscera (e.g. the salivary glands). They secrete as a rule an appreciable 
quantity of one or another kind of fluid or solid (e.g. wax in the external 
ear). The whole of the alimentary tract is lined with small glands—all 
of the so-called mucous surfaces, the nasal passages, interior of mouth, 
throat, sex organs, etc., are kept moist by means of the mucous glands. 


61 


62 BEHAVIORISM 


Then there are many duct glands especially devoted to the digestion 
of our food. The salivary glands in the mouth give out a secretion that 
starts the process of digestion. In the stomach there are several different 
types of glands that continue the process of digestion. Again, nearby or 
in the small intestine are glands that give out secretions that pour into it 
to complete the process of digestion. Chief among these glands are the 
pancreas (secreting the pancreatic juice) ; glands in the walls of the intes- 
tine (gland cells lining the intestine are shown in Fig. 12); and the liver 
(secreting bile). One of the large glands of the body is the kidney which 
secretes urine. 


The unconditioned stimuli that start glandular action are of sense 
organ origin. In other words, secretion responses (one form of behavior) 
are aroused in the same way that motor responses are aroused (through 
sense organ stimulation). 


After this short discussion of the duct glands, do you still find your- 
self saying that secretions haven’t much to do with higher forms of human 
behavior? Will you take my word for it that our so-called higher forms 
of behavior are terribly at the mercy 
of just these lowly secretions we have 
been talking about, especially when 
something goes wrong with one or 
more of them? Let the mouth glands 
begin to over-secrete or under-secrete, 
as happens at times; or the small mu- 
cous glands begin to over-secrete as 
they do in the nose when we have a 
cold; let something go wrong with the 
digestive secretions, or let the throat 
become irritable and sensitive through 
lack of secretions; let the kidney over- 
secrete and keep the bladder overly 

full, or the secretions from the sex 

Ep ithelial cells Pp ut tog ether. ans become excessive —then our 

to forma lining tissue whole conduct may becorhe modified. 

tor the intestines Even our social behavior may become 

| involved. We may insult or hurt the 

feelings of a friend, spoil a piece of fine work, even lose our jobs, and, 

what is worse, if the faulty glands are deep down in the visceral cavity we 

may be able to give no verbal account of what has gone wrong. I shall 

speak again about this lack of our ability to put anything in words about 
visceral and glandular behavior. 





THE HUMAN BODY 63 


The Ductless Glands (sometimes called endocrine organs) :- During 
recent years, physiology and medicine have centered a great deal of effort 
and thought upon the exceedingly interesting and elusive structures we 
call ductless glands. The duct glands pour out their secretions through 
an opening, as we have just seen. These secretions are largely local in 
their action. Again relatively large measurable amounts of the secretions 
are poured out. 


The situation is quite different with the ductless glands. While the 
organ may be very large, e.g., the thyroid, the secretions from it are 
minute—too small to be collected or directly measured by any known 
physiological method. 


Again these glands have no external opening. How do their products 
get out into the body? The answer probably has already come to you. 
Look upon these (closed or ductless) glands as a chemical laboratory— 
each manufacturing a powerful compound or chemical body (some of 
which we now know) but in minute quantities. As the blood bathes the 
cells of these glands, it takes up the chemical bodies and carries them to 
other organs, sometimes remotely removed, from the place where the 
gland gave rise to the secretion. ‘These minute chemical bodies have the 
power to stir up activity in many other organs of the body. We have 
a name for these ductless gland secretions — hormones — which means 
literally something to arouse or to stir up. Hormones, then, are the chem- 
ical messengers which the glands send to arouse or depress activity in 
another part of the body (very often it is another ductless gland that is 
aroused or checked).1 Everything that we know about ductless gland 
secretions points to the fact that they act like drugs upon the body. ‘They 
play a vitally important role both in the general nutrition of the body and 
in its growth. They likewise play an extremely important part in the gen- 
eral behavior of human beings, as we shall soon see. 


The most important Endocrine Glands: The most important ductless 
glands are: (1) The thyroids and parathyroids; (2) the adrenal bodies; 
(3) the pituitary bodies; (4) the pineal.body; (5) the so-called puberty 
gland. There are several other glands that furnish internal secretions, as 
well as external secretions, such as the pancreas, liver, thymus and others, 
but the above five are the important ones. 


The Thyroid Gland:- If the men in the audience will feel along the 
sides of their windpipe just below the Adam’s apple, they will feel the 


1 Boars the ductless gland secretions which depress activities in other organs are called 
chalones. 


64 BEHAVIORISM 


mass of the thyroid gland. The women haven’t the Adam’s apple but 
they do have the gland at the corresponding level. It is a fairly large 
gland. There are two lobes to it connected by a bridge that crosses in 
front of the windpipe. It is made up largely of specialized epithelial cells. 
It has no duct. It is richly supplied with blood vessels and with nerve 
fibres which run directly to the secreting gland cells. 


In this workshop a most powerful chemical body is secreted. This 
chemical body has been experimentally isolated and can now be made in 
the laboratory. It is called thyroxin. It contains 60% iodine. 


Effect of thyroid secretion upon growth:- If a child is born with 
deficient or faulty thyroid apparatus it becomes a Cretin: growth is arrest- 
ed and stunted, bones fail to become hard (incomplete ossification), the 
skin becomes thick and dry and the hair dry and colorless, the reproductive 
organs fail to develop. General behavior is markedly affected. Only the 
simplest things can be learned. Age improves its condition not at all. It 
remains infantile in all of its reactions. 


If the thyroid is removed from the adult because of disease, of 
course, there is no change in stature but the other disturbing symptoms 
eccur—the pasty, clammy appearance of the skin, the dry, falling hair. 
The individual rapidly puts on weight. General activity becomes low. 


Thanks to modern advances in physiological science, relief from this 
condition can often be obtained both by the adult and by the child. Indeed, 
normal growth can often be restored in the child by feeding it the dried 
thyroid gland of sheep or by feeding at stated intervals a small amount of 
thyroxin. In both cases feeding of this substance must continue through- 
out life. 


Sometimes the gland is overdeveloped and gives out an over-secretion. 
The body then works too fast—at too high a level. All vital processes are 
speeded up (Grave’s disease). Blood pressure becomes high, the heart 
speeds up in its action. The individual shows general overactivity, irri- 
tableness, oftentimes insomnia. Formerly surgical treatment was resorted 
to in such cases—part of the gland was removed. Now “special care and 
feeding” are more often resorted to. Jodine—free diet is prescribed—as 
are rest and freedom from occupational strain. 


In general it may be said that the thyroid seems to act as a kind of 
governor for the whole body. If it over-secretes every cell in the body 
speeds up its action. If it under-secretes every cell in the body slows 
down its rate. 


THE HUMAN BODY 65 


Is it any wonder that all behaviorists are interested in everything the 
physiologist can teach us about this gland? 


The Parathyroid Glands:- Situated close to each lobe of the thyroid, 
and sometimes imbedded in it, are two little structures about the size of a 
pea (four structures in all). These structures are made up of solid masses 
of specialized epithelial cells. The positive functions of the parathyroids 
are still in the realm of speculation, but we know what happens when these 
glands are removed. Occasionally when removing diseased thyroids in 
men the parathyroids have been removed by accident. Their com- 
plete removal brings death both in man and in practically all other mam- 
mals. Following their loss the animal shows muscular tremor — then 
spasms, uncoordinated contractions, a rise in body temperature, rapid 
gasping respiration, vomiting and diarrhoea. Finally death ensues. It is 
now believed that the parathyroids give rise to a secretion which tends to 
keep in check or restrain overactivity of the nervous system (restrains the 
discharge of nerve cells). Secretions from this gland seem also to exert 
some influence upon the deposits of calcium for the bony tissue and the 
formation of the teeth. In a few cases young animals have survived the 
removal of these glands for several weeks. These animals showed poorly 
formed bones and poorly formed teeth. Extract of parathyroid (made 
from dried parathyroids of sheep) help to keep animals alive which have 
suffered removal of the glands but no satisfactory way of keeping such 
animals alive for any length of time has been found. The chemical body 
given out by these glands has never been isolated. 


The Adrenal Bodies or Glands:- The adrenal glands, of which there 
are two (left and right) lie very close to the kidneys. Death follows the 
removal of both glands. After removal of both glands, the animal begins 
to show signs of muscular weakness. The body temperature drops, the 
heart beat becomes slow. Death usually occurs by the end of the third 
day. 


The active secretion from this gland (that is from one portion of it— 
the medulla) has been chemically isolated by Abel at the Johns Hopkins 
Hospital, and others. It is called epumephrin, or adrenin. 


Under emotional excitement relatively large quantities of adrenin 
are released and find their way into the blood vessels. It is during strong 
emotional excitement (‘‘fear,” “rage” and “pain’”) that we find great and 
long continued muscular effort exhibited. 


The reason for this increase in the muscular output in the presence 
of exciting stimuli is to be sought for in the following factors: I pofnted 


66 BEHAVIORISM 


out to you a while ago that there is a stored food supply in the liver called 
glycogen. We have just seen that under emotional excitement there is 
an increased supply of adrenin in the blood. Now adrenin has the power 
to split up the glycogen in the liver and set it free in the blood stream in 
the form of blood sugar. The blood sugar is carried to the working mus- 
cles giving them a readily utilizable food supply. The free adrenin in 
the blood also causes the arteries to expand and pour through the work- 
ing muscles a larger and faster stream of blood. This has the additional 
effect of rapidly washing out the fast accumulating waste products that 
come from the working muscles. Professor Cannon, of Harvard, whose 
discovery this is, claims that this adrenal gland mechanism which makes 
the animal fight harder and longer, run faster and farther, has been of 
great biological service to man in his struggles with a hostile*environment. 


The Pituitary Body: This very small body is situated underneath 
the brain. If you were to make a small opening in the back part of the 
roof of the mouth, you would come upon it just before you reached 
the brain. It is made up of a posterior division and an anterior division. 
Each of these divisions must be looked upon as a separate gland each 
giving rise to a characteristic hormone (or possibly several). 


The Anterior Division or Lobe: If the anterior division (or lobe) is 
removed death occurs within a very few days. There is a fall in body 
temperature, unsteadiness in gait, emaciation and diarrhoea. When, owing 
to disease early in life, the anterior portion begins to over-secrete, there 
comes a peculiar development of the whole body known as gigantism (you 
have seen these overgrown giants in circuses). When the over-secretion 
occurs in later life there is very great enlargement of the bones of the 
face and of the hands and feet (acromegaly). 


No one has yet succeeded in chemically isolating this hormone. Ex- 
tracts made from the dried anterior portion of the pituitary seem to have 
very little effect. There can be no doubt from all of the medical evidence 
we have that the secretions from the anterior portion exert a profound 
effect upon the growth of the skeleton and upon the growth of the con- 
nective tissue of the body. 


The Posterior Division or Lobe: Removal of the posterior lobe does 
not produce death but it brings about a very marked change in metabolism 
(the way our food is handled by the body). The body becomes very 
tolerant of sugars. Fat is taken on rapidly. When the posterior lobe is 
removed in young animals the growth of the sex glands is arrested and 
the animal becomes almost like a eunuch in behavior. 


THE HUMAN BODY 67 


While the chemical bodies set free by the posterior gland have not 
been isolated, extracts of the dried gland when administered produce a 
marked effect. The heart is slowed and the blood pressure is raised (an 
effect somewhat similar to that of adrenin). The main effect can be seen 
in the increased tone that comes to all unstriped muscles. It has an espe- 
cially marked effect in causing the muscles of the uterus to contract (used 
frequently in hastening childbirth). Extracts from this portion have a 
distinct stimulating effect upon the kidneys and upon the mammary glands. 
Like adrenin again the extract hastens the process of breaking up the 
stored glycogen in the liver, thus releasing it in the form of blood sugar 
for the use of active muscles. 


The Pineal Gland: This is a very small gland situated in the brain 
itself. It reaches its most active stage of development about the seventh 
year and then begins to atrophy. The glandular tissue gradually disappears. 
It is supposed that this gland furnishes a secretion early in life which 
holds the development of the sex organs in check until puberty. It shares 
this function with the thymus—another ductless gland in the neck which 
also gradually disappears around puberty or even earlier. 


The So-Called Puberty Gland: The sex glands in addition to furnish- 
ing the external secretions for reproduction, furnish also a ductless gland 
secretion or hormone. The cells furnishing the external secretion are 
called gonads (true sex cells). Lying among the sex cells or gonads are 
numbers of small cells called interstitial cells. The latter cells furnish the 
ductless gland secretion or hormone that gets into the blood and is 
distributed all over the body. This group of interstitial cells makes up 
the so-called puberty gland, 


This gland is much in the public and medical eye. All of the so-called 
rejuvenation operations are concerned with it. 


If this gland (or rather this group of interstitial cells) is removed 
in the male youth, as it always has to be when castration occurs (removal 
of testes) the youth grows to be tall, the face is beardless, the voice never 
deepens. There is no sex aggressiveness. The effect of castration upon 
the female (removal of ovaries) is not so marked as in the case of the 
male. 


The evidence is growing that it is the removal of the hormones coming 
from the puberty glands which robs the castrated individual of sex aggres- 
siveness and all positive forms of sex behavior, rather than the removal 
of the gonads or true sex cells. 


68 BEHAVIORISM 


In other words the hormone coming from the puberty glands seems 
to activate the whole sex life of both male and female. Lacking this 
hormone there is a lack of sex vigor and what we call youthfulness of sex 
life. 


This has led to the thought, in recent years, that there may be a way 
of restoring sex life to older men and women by operative methods. The 
one method—that of Dr. Serge Voronoff of Paris—is to graft into the 
old male small pieces of testes from a young hardy animal of the same 
(or closely allied) species. He claims that the graft “‘takes’—1i. e. lives, 
and begins to send its hormone out into the blood, restoring sex aggressive- 
ness and sex vitality. You can see that no matter in what part of the body 
the gland tissue is grafted, it has to give out its secretion to the blood and 
thus give sex tone to all the necessary tissues of the body. The question 
whether such a rejuvenated old individual could impregnate the female 
would depend upon whether the gonads or true sex cells remained func- 
tional or not—upon the presence of live sperm in the testes. At any rate 
erection would take place and an orgasm would occur (the essentials of 
the male sex act). Sex life would thus be prolonged. 


Another operation for increasing the production of the ductless gland 
hormone from the puberty gland is employed by Steinach, the Viennese 
surgeon. He finds that if the tube carrying the spermatozoa (the cell 
passing from the male that fertilizes the female egg) is tied off so that 
the spermatoza cannot escape, it causes the true sex cells to atrophy,?— 
but not the interstitial cells. These increase in size and in number appar- 
ently—thus causing an increase in their activity. Males having lost sex 
vigor when operated upon in this way, have apparently a renewal of their 
sex life. They are sterile, of course, because the spermatozoa do not form 
nor could they get out if they did form. 


It is too early yet to forecast the real effects upon society of these 
attempts to prolong the period of the sex life. The effects of these opera- 
tions, or the allied ones, on the female are still very much in doubt. In 
the case of the male we know little yet of their permanency. If the 
chemical body constituting the hormone could be experimentally isolated 
and if it were found that it could exert its effect when taken through the 
mouth as does thyroxin, it might considerably alleviate the inferiorities and 
anxieties of advanced middle age. 


Can the Activity of Ductless Glands be Conditioned? We saw in our 
study of the other reacting organs, the striped and unstriped muscles and 


* 


2 pone, Diy AIOE US claim that the gonads (sex cells) do not atrophy when the vas (duct) is 
tied off. 


THE HUMAN BODY 69 


the duct glands, that their activity could be conditioned—i. e. that habits 
could be set up in them. No secure evidence is at hand to show that the 
activity of ductless glands can be conditioned. Since these hormones act 
like powerful drugs—since they control growth and development and regu- 
late the speed at which the body runs—it is of utmost importance to know 
whether or not they are conditioned. If they are, society is more than ever 
under obligation to watch carefully the early home training of the infant 
and child. Too much or too little of these secretions or a lack of balance 
of secretions may even prevent the possibility of the child’s developing 
along normal behavior lines. 


While experimental proof is lacking, I for one am convinced that 
these glands can be and always are conditioned. We know that uncondi- 
tioned stimuli arousing the reactions we call fear and rage (e. g. where 
cats are tied down and harried and worried by a barking dog) bring 
about an increase of adrenin. We now know that fear and rage behavior 
can be conditioned. We have some reason, too, to think that the thyroid 
is directly thrown into activity by unconditioned sex stimuli and since we 
know that positive sex behavior can be conditioned we have good theo- 
retical grounds for holding that thyroid activity can be conditioned. The 
evidence is fair for holding that in the whole bodily process we call condi- 
tioning the ductless glands are intimately involved—that conditioned 
stimuli may bring about both over-secretion (hyperactivity) and under- 
secretion (hyposecretion) of the ductless glands. 


This may explain in part why it is that psychopathological disturbance 
of behavior may result from constant contact with an environment in 
which a multitude of unfortunate conditioned stimuli are ever assailing 
us and why it is that we very often get well as soon as we straighten out 
that environment or else get away from it. Sometimes we carry the old 
environment along with us to the new environment by means of our verbal 
organization. ‘There is thus a good reason when going into the new en- 
vironment for us to build up new activities with new verbalization—letting 
‘the old world of overt activity die out and the old words lose their hold 
upon us by the well known process we call disuse. Many a youthful 
psychopath and many a youthful criminal have been reclaimed in this way 
—even when we were working blindly and without any clear plan as to 
what we hoped to accomplish. I think that it is becoming possible now to 
work more definitely along these lines especially in the field of childhood 
—with the difficult child—with the youthful criminal. 


Resumé: In this long lecture please do not get lost. Recall for a mo- 
ment that we started out to study the elementary cells and the elementary 


70 BEHAVIORISM 


tissues they form. We then took up the organs formed by these tissues. We 
found that there are sense organs—where the stimuli are applied. These 
we have studied. We found that there are reacting organs—striped mus- 
cles, unstriped muscles, duct glands and ductless glands—all of these we 
have studied. But there is one more set of organs—the conducting organs 
—the nervous system. Its function is to conduct a nervous impulse from 
the sense organs over to the reacting organs—the muscles and the glands. 
To do this there must be an actual chain of nerve cells (and their fibres) 
running from each sense organ to the central nervous system (the brain 
and Spinal cord) and out from the central nervous system to the muscles 
and glands. Before finishing our study of the body tonight let us look 
for a moment at this enormously important part of our body. 


How the Nervous System is Made Up: I have already told you 
about individual nerve cells and their fibres and have shown you a few pic- 
tures of them. Now the whole of the nervous system is made up of these 
neurones placed together in such a way as to form actual permanent path- 
ways from sense organs to reacting organs—the central organs of the 
brain and spinal cord form no exception to this rule since we must look 
upon them as just a part of the system of pathways running from sense 
organs to reacting organs. Naturally in the nervous system as a whole 
and especially in the brain and spinal cord there are supporting structures 
—connective-tissue membranes—blood vessels, etc. 

The Simplest Pathway From Sense Organ to Reacting Organ—The 
Short Reflex Arc: The simplest functional pathway from a sense organ to 


afferent neurone 








cell body of 


fatferent neurone 
ense orgart 


Diagram of short reflex arc 


Fig. \4 


THE HUMAN BODY 71 


a reacting organ is called a short reflex arc. Suppose the tip of my finger 
is burnt as my hand touches an electric flat iron which has been left 
standing with the electric current on! Immediately before “ouch!” or 
some swear word can be spoken the hand is jerked back—reflexly jerked 
back so we say. Only three neurones (theoretically) are involved in this 
act—one extending from the skin to the spinal cord—the so-called afferent 
neurone; one inside the spinal cord (and which doesn’t run outside of the 
cord) called the central neurone; one extending from the spinal cord to 
the muscles of the hand, called the motor neurone. Please try to think of 
hundreds of thousands of these simple direct short reflex pathways. There 
are many thousands of these short reflexes connecting the skin alone with 
the reacting organs. These afford a direct connection—a segmental ar- 
rangement—for getting prompt response to dangerous stimuli. 


The Long Reflexes: No matter how complicated the pathway for 
the neural impulse may be, two elements of the above described short 
reflex arc are always involved—viz: the afferent neurone running from 
sense organ to cord or brain, (please note now that the brain is connected 
with some of the sense organs by these short reflex arcs, e. g. the eye, 
ear, nose, tongue, semi-circular canals, the skin of the head and face, and 
indeed with some of the sense organ structures in the viscera and striped 
muscles) ; and the motor neurone running from the cord or brain to the 
muscles and glands. Whenever we respond to a stimulus these two ele- 
ments of the reflex arc are always involved. 


Now the longer and more complicated neural pathways are made 
longer and more complicated by the fact that sometimes more than one 
central neurone is included in the arc. Sometimes the pathway in the 
cord and brain 1s very complicated. Suppose this reaction is demanded of 
us: I go downstairs to find a pencil in the dark. I left it lying on the 
library table. I reach out my hand; it strikes something round and smooth. 
I feel for its point; it has none. I say aloud: “My oldest boy’s pea- 
shooter.” I drop it and continue my search. I come upon another round 
object. It has a point. I touch the other end. It has no eraser on it. I 
say again: “This is a stick belonging to the baby’s mechano set.” I drop it 
and search further. Finally I come upon a round object; it is pointed; it 
has an eraser on it. I grasp it, turn upon my heels and go upstairs and 
begin to write. Notice that this kind of response involves a wide range of 
adjustments; muscles of hands, legs and trunk are all called into action; 
earlier learned speech reactions are called into play; more than one seg- 
ment of the body is involved ; many segments have to cooperate, to function 
together. There is integration—a tying up of one bodily part with another. 
For this process of mtegration we need a central nervous system—some 


72 BEHAVIORISM 


thing more than just an open connection between some sense organ point 
and a single set of muscles—we need a complicated system of neural path- 
ways—we need a brain and spinal cord. 


Nature of Nervous Impulse: What is it that passes over the neural 
pathways? A neural impulse that starts in the chemical workshop of the 
sense organ. By nature it is something like a series of local electric cur- 
rents (one would scientifically describe it as a rapid passage of a wave 
of chemical decomposition essentially electrical in nature). We know that 
it travels at a rate of about 125 metres per second. We know further 
that if the nerve elements are deprived of oxygen they will not conduct 
the impulse—we know that when the nervous elements are actively at 
work they give off C O, (carbon dioxide) more rapidly than when at rest, 
etc. While we do not know everything about the nature of the nervous 
impulse we know enough to be sure that it is a normal physico-chemical 
process that is rapidly losing its mysteriousness by being brought under 
laboratory control. 


Summary: We have covered a good deal of ground in these lectures 
but don’t you find that you have now a working notion of the body? That 
while you couldn’t make it, you can at least understand its main functions? 
Will not even this bird’s-eye view help you in building your psychological 
foundations ? 


Let us now recapitulate in a hundred words or so our principal results: 
The body is built of cells and their products. These cells are woven into 
elementary tissues and the tissues are built up into larger structures, or- 
gans, each possessing a certain unity and performing definite functions. One 
such group of organs is (1) the sense organs—skin, eye, ear, nose, etc. 
(don’t forget that some of the sense organs are hidden from the direct 
observation—e. g. those in the muscles and tendons and those in the vis- 
cera) ; another set is (2) the reacting organs—the striped or skeletal mus- 
cles ; the unstriped muscles and glands (making up largely the viscera). A 
third set is (3) the connecting organs, namely the nervous system consist- 
ing of nerve paths running from sense organ to brain or cord and from 
brain or cord to the reacting organs—and please do not forget that there 
are very complicated, but not mysterious, pathways in the brain and cord 
themselves. 


The whole body of man is built around the keynote “rapid—and wken 
needed, complicated—reactions to simple and complex stimuli.” 


In the next lecture we shall study some of man’s unlearned embryo- 
logical reactions—some of the things he does in advance of training—some 


THE HUMAN BODY eS 


of the things he does just because he comes here equipped to behave in that 
way. We used to call such reactions instincts. We seriously doubt now 
that they are ‘inborn’ and ‘native’ reactions. They apparently grow up 
(modifying the structure as they grow up, just as exercise structurally 
modifies the blacksmith’s arm and whole body) as a result of the compli- 
cated stimuli that are offered throughout intra-uterine life, 


V 
ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 


Part I—On the Subject of Talent, Tendencies and the 
Inheritance of all So-called ‘Mental’ Traits 


Introduction: In the next few lectures we shall talk about how man 
is equipped to behave at birth—a subject that touches the very heart of 
human psychology. 


When the array of facts about any subject is not very complete it 
is only human nature to announce a thesis, that is, state what one is going 
to try to prove and then try to prove it by a logical argument. I am in 
that position. I have not the full complement of facts about the so-called 
‘instinctive’ nature»of man—TI do not know who has; hence, please look 
upon my next few lectures both as logical presentations of what facts there 
are in the case and as a thesis which I am trying to defend. I shall present 
my thesis first. 


The Thesis Presented 


Man is an animal born with certain definite types of structure. Hav- | 
ing that kind of structure, he is forced to respond to stimuli at birth in 
certain ways (for example: breathing, heart beat, sneezing, and the like. 
A fairly full list I shall give you later on). This repertoire of responses 
is in general the same for each of us. Yet there exists a certain amount 
of variation in each—the variation is probably merely proportional to the 
variation there is in structure (including in structure, of course, chemical 
constitution). It is the same repertoire now that it was when the genus 
homo first appeared many millions of years ago. Let us call this group of 
reactions man’s unlearned behavior. 


In this relatively simple list of human responses there is none corres- 
ponding to what is called an ‘instinct’ by present-day psychologists and 
biologists. ‘There are then for us no instincts—we no longer need the 
term in psychology. Everything we have been in the habit of calling 
an ‘instinct’ today is a result largely of training—belongs to man’s learned 
behavior, 


As acorollary from this I wish to draw the conclusion that there is no 
such thing as an inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament, mental con- 


74 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 75 


stitution and characteristics. These things again depend on training that 
goes on mainly in the cradle. The behaviorist would not say: “He inherits 
his father’s capacity or talent for being a fine swordsman.” He would say: 
“This child certainly has his father’s slender build of body, the same type 
of eyes. His build is wonderfully like his father’s. He, too, has the build 
of a swordsman.” And he would go on to say: “ — and his father is very 
fond of him. He put a tiny sword into his hand when he was a year 
of age, and in all their walks he talks sword play, attack and defense, 
the code of duelling and the like.” A certain type of structure, plus early 
training—slanting—accounts for adult performance, 


The Argument In Its Defense 


Let me start by saying that from now on man for us is a whole animal. 
When he reacts he reacts with each and every part of his body. Some- 
times he reacts more strongly with one group of muscles and glands than 
with another. We then say he is doing something. We have named many 
of these acts such as breathing, sleeping, crawling, walking, running, fight- 
ing, crying, etc. But please do not forget that each of these named acts 
involves the whole body. 


We must begin, too, to think of man as a mammal—a primate—a two- 
legged animal with two arms and two delicate mobile hands. As an 
animal that has a nine-months embryonic life, a long helpless infancy, a 
slowly developing childhood, eight years of adolescence and a total life 
span of some three score years and ten. 


We find this animal living in the tropics almost without shelter; going 
naked, living upon easily caught animals and upon fruit and herbs that 
require no cultivation. We find him in temperate regions, but dwelling 
here in well built, steam heated houses. We find the male always heavily 
clad even in summer, wearing a hat upon his head—the only naturally pro- 
tected part of his body. We find the female of this species dressed in the 
scantiest of clothes. We find the male working frantically (the female 
rarely) at almost every kind of vocation, from digging holes in the ground, 
damming up water like beavers, to building tall buildings of steel and 
concrete. Again we find man in arctic regions, clad in furs, eating fatty 
foods and living in houses built of snow and ice. 


Everywhere we find man, we find him doing the strangest things, dis- 
playing the most divergent manners and customs. In Africa we find the 
blacks eating one another; in China we find men eating mainly rice and 
throwing it towards the mouth with dainty chopsticks. In other countries 


76 BEHAVIORISM 


we find man using a metal knife and fork. So widely different is the 
adult behavior of the primitive Australian bushmen from that of the 
dwellers in internal China, and both of these groups differ so widely in 
behavior from the cultivated Englishman, that the question is forced upon 
us—Do all members of the species homo wherever they are found in 
biological history start at birth with the same group of responses and are 
these responses aroused by the same set of stimuli? Put in another way, 
is the unlearned, birth equipment of man, which you have been in the habit 
of calling instincts, the same wherever he is found, be it in Africa or in 
Boston, be it in the year six million B. C. or in 1925 A. D.? Has he the 
same unlearned equipment, whether born in the cotton fields of the South, 
in the Mayflower or beneath the silken purple quilts of European royalty? 


The Genetic Psychologists’ Answer 


The genetic psychologist—the student best qualified to answer this 
question—hates to be faced with it because his data are limited. But since 
he is forced to answer he can give his honest conviction. His answer is, 
“Yes, within the limits of individual variation, man is born with the same 
general set of responses (let us wait before we call them instincts though) 
regardless of the station of his parents, regardless of the geological age in 
which he was born and regardless of the geographical zone in which he 
was born.” 


But you say: “Is there nothing in heredity—is there nothing in 
eugenics—is there no advantage in being born an “F. F. V.”—has there 
been no progress in human evolution?” Let us examine a few of the ques- 
tions you are now bursting to utter. 


Certainly black parents will bear black children if the line is pure 
(except possibly once in a million years or so when a sport or “mutant” 
is born which theoretically may be white, yellow or red). Certainly the 
yellow skinned Chinese parents will bear a yellow skinned offspring. Cer- 
tainly Caucasian parents will bear white children. But these differences 
are relatively slight. They are due among other things to differences in 
the amount and kind of pigments in the skin. I defy anyone to take these 
infants at birth, study their behavior, and mark off differences in behavior 
that will characterize white from black and white or black from yellow. 
There will be differences in behavior but the burden of proof is upon the 
individual be he biologist or eugenicist who claims that these racial diff- 
erences are greater than the individual differences. 


Again you say: “How about children born from parents who have 
large hands, with short stiff fingers, extra oer or toes? It can 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 77, 


be shown that children from these parents inherit these peculiarities of 
structure.” Our answer is: Yes, thousands of variations are laid down 
in the germ plasm and will always appear (other factors being equal) in 
the offspring. Other inheritances are color of hair, color of eyes, texture 
of skin, Albinism (very light individuals with little or no pigment in hair 
and eyes—vision always being defective). The biologist, knowing the 
makeup of the parents and grandparents, can predict many of even the finer 
structural characteristics of the offspring. 


So let us hasten to admit—yes, there are heritable differences in form, 
in structure. Some people are born with long slender fingers, with delicate 
throat structure; some are born tall, large, of prize-fighter build; others 
with delicate skin and eye coloring. These differences are in the germ 
plasm and are handed down from parent to child. More questionable is 
the inheritance of such things as the early or late graying of hair, the 
early loss of hair, the span of life, the bearing of twins, and the like. 
Many of these questions have already been answered by biologists and 
many others are in the process of being answered. But do not let these 
undoubted facts of inheritance lead you astray as they have some of the 
biologists. The mere presence of these structures tells us not one thing 
about function. This has been the source of a great deal of confusion in 
the subject we now have under consideration. Much of our structure 
laid down in heredity would never come to light, would never show in 
function, unless the organism were put in a certain environment, subjected 
to certain stimuli and forced to undergo training. Our hereditary structure 
lies ready to be shaped in a thousand different ways—the same structure 
mind you—depending on the way in which the child is brought up. To 
convince yourself, measure the right arm of the blacksmith, look at the 
pictures of strong men in our terrible magazines devoted to physical cul- 
ture. Or turn to the poor bent back of the ancient bookkeeper. These 
people are structurally shaped (within limits) by the kinds of lives they 
lead, 


Are ‘Mental Traits Inherited? 


But every one admits this about bone and tendons and muscles—“now 
how about mental traits? Do you mean to say that great talent is not 
inherited? ‘That criminal tendencies are not inherited? Surely we can 
prove that these things can be inherited.” This was the older idea, the 
idea which grew up before we knew as much about what early shaping 
throughout infant life will do as we now know. The question is often 
put in specific form: “Look at the musicians who are sons of musicians ; 


78 BEHAVIORISM 


look at Wesley Smith, the son of the great economist, John Smith—surely 
a chip off the old block if ever there was one.” You already know the 
behaviorist’s way of answering these questions. You know he recognizes 
no such things as mental traits, dispositions or tendencies. Hence, to him, 
there is no sense to the question of the inheritance of talent as the question 
is ordinarily raised, 


Wesley Smith was thrown into an environment early in life that fairly 
reeked with economic, political and social questions. His attachment for 
his father was strong. The path he took was a very natural one. He went 
into that life for the same reason that your son becomes a lawyer, a doctor, 
or a politician. If the father is a shoemaker, a saloonkeeper, or a street 
cleaner—or is engaged in any other socially unrecognized occupation, the 
son does not follow so easily in the father’s footsteps, but that is another 
story. Why did Wesley Smith succeed in reaching eminence when so 
many sons who had famous fathers failed to attain equal eminence? 
Was it because this particular son inherited his father’s talent? There 
may be a thousand reasons, not one of which lends any color to the view 
that Wesley Smith inherited the ‘talent’ of his father. Suppose John 
Smith had had three sons who by hypothesis all had bodies so made up 
anatomically and physiologically that each could put on the same organiza- 
tion (habits) as the other two. Suppose further that all three began to 
work upon economics at the age of six months.t One was beloved by his 
father. He followed in his father’s footsteps and due to his father’s tutor- 
ship this son overtook and finally surpassed his father. Two years after 
the birth of Wesley, the second son was born; but the father was taken 
up with the elder son. The second son was beloved by the mother who 
now got less and less of her husband’s time, so she devoted her time to the 
second son. The second son could not follow so closely in the footsteps of 
his father; he was influenced naturally by what his mother was doing. He 
early gave up his economic studies, entered society and ultimately became 
a “lounge lizard.”” The third son, born two years later, was unwanted. 
The father was taken up with the eldest son, the mother with the second 
son. The third son was also put to work upon economics, but receiving 
little parental care, he drifted daily towards the servants’ quarters. An 
unscrupulous maid had taught him to masturbate at three. At twelve the 
chauffeur made a homosexual of him. Later falling in with neighborhood 
thieves he became a pick-pocket, then a stool-pigeon and finally a drug 
fiend. He died of paresis in an insane asylum. There was nothing wrong 
with the heredity of any one of these sons. All by hypothesis had equal 





1 And by this statement we do not mean that their genetic constitution is identical. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 79 


chances at birth. All could have been the fathers of fine, healthy sons if 
their respective wives had been of good stock (except possibly the third 
son after he contracted syphilis). 


You will probably say that I am flying in the face of the known facts 
of eugenics and experimental evolution—that the geneticists have proven 
that many of the behavior characteristics of the parents are handed down 
to the offspring—they will cite mathematical ability, musical ability, and 
many, many other types. My reply is that the geneticists are working 
under the banner of the old “faculty” psychology. One need not give very 
much weight to any of their present conclusions. Before the lecture is 
over I hope to show you that there are no “faculties” and no stereotyped 
patterns of behavior which deserve the name of either “talent’’ or 
“instinct,” 


Differences in Structure and Differences in Early Training Will Account 
For All Differences in Later Behavior 


A while ago I said that granting individual variation in structure 
we could find no real proof that man’s unlearned repertoire of acts has 
differed through the ages or that he has ever been either more or less capa- 
ble of putting on complex training than he is in 1925. The fact that there 
are marked individual variations 1n structure among men has been known 
since biology began. But we have never sufficiently utilized it in analyzing 
man’s behavior. In this lecture I want to utilize another fact only recently 
brought out by the behaviorists and other students of animal psychology. 
Namely, that habit formation starts in all probability in embryonic life and 
that even in the human young environment shapes behavior so quickly 
that all of the older ideas about what types of behavior are inherited and 
what are learned break down. Grant variations in structure at birth and 
rapid habit formation from birth, and you have a basis for explaining 
many of the so-called facts of inheritance of “mental” characteristics. Let 
us take up these two points; 


(1) Human Beings Differ in the Way They Are Put Together 


My last lecture gave you a faint idea of the complexity of the materi- 
al that goes into the human body. It enabled you to tolerate the fact too 
that there must be variation in the way these complicated tissues are put 
together. We have just brought out the fact that some human beings are 
born with long fingers, some with short ; some with long arm and leg bones, 
some with short; some with hard bones, and some with soft; some with 


80 BEHAVIORISM 


over-developed glands; some with poorly functioning glands. Again you 
know that we can identify human beings by differences in their finger 
prints. No two human beings have ever had the same finger prints, yet 
you can mark off man’s hand and foot prints from the tracks of all other 
animals. No two human beings have bones exactly alike, yet any good 
comparative anatomist can pick out a human bone (and there are over 
200 of them) from the bones of every other mammal. If so simple a 
thing as the markings on the fingers differs in every individual, you have 
absolute proof that general behavior will and must be different. Infants 
crawl differently, cry differently, differ in the frequency with which de- 
faecation and urination occur, differ in early vocal efforts, in requirements 
for food, in the speed and rapidity with which they use their hands— even 
identical twins show these differences—because they differ structurally 
and differ slightly in their chemical makeup. They differ likewise in the 
finer details of sense organ equipment, in the details of brain and cord 
structure, in the heart and circulatory mechanisms and in the length, 
breadth, thickness and flexibility of the striped muscular systems, 


Yet with all of these structural differences “a man’s a man for a’ that” 
—he is made up of the same material as other men and has the same gen- 
eral architectural plan regardless of habit. 


(2) Differences In Early Training Make Man Still More Different 


There are then admittedly these slight but significant differences in 
structure between each human being and every other human being. Dif- 
ferences in early training are even more marked. I will not stop now 
to give much proof of this—the next few lectures will furnish it abund- 
antly. We now know that conditioned reflexes start in the human child 
at birth (and probably before)—-we know that there is no such thing as 
giving two children, even though belonging to the same family, the same 
training. A’ doting young married couple have twins—a boy and a girl— 
the children are dressed alike and fed alike. But the father pets and 
fondles the girl, surrounds her with love; the mother treats the boy in the 
same way, but the father wants the boy to follow in his own footsteps. He 
is stern with him—he can’t help shaping the boy his way. The mother 
wants the girl to be modest and maidenly. Soon these children show great 
differences in behavior. They receive different training from infancy. The 
next children are born. Now the father is more taken up with affairs—he 
has to work harder. The mother is more taken up with social duties; 
servants are brought in. The younger children have brothers and sisters; 
they are brought up in a world wholly different from that of the older 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 81 


children. One child falls ill, Strict training is abandoned, all rules are 
off with a sickly child. Again, one child gets badly frightened— 
becomes conditioned—shows fear at everything; he becomes timid and 
his regular course of boyish activity is interfered with. Indeed we may 
take an actual case. Two girls, aged nine, live in adjoining houses. They 
have the “same” training (mothers are close friends and bring up children 
according to the same rules), One day they took a walk. The girl on the 
left looked at the street and saw only street activity, the one on the right 
looked towards the houses and saw a man exposing his sex organs. The 
girl on the right was considerably troubled and disturbed and reached equa- 
nimity only after months of discussion with her parents. 


We shall come back again and again to these facts so I will not 
multiply instances of early differences in training and conditioning. 


The Conclusion We Draw 


How will these two points explain the so-called facts of inheritance 
of talent or mental characteristics. Let us take a hypothetical case. Here 
are two boys, one aged 7, the other 6. The father is a pianist of great 
talent, the mother an artist working in oil, a portrait painter of note. The 
father has strong large hands but with long, flexible fingers (it is a myth 
that all artists have long, tapering, finely formed fingers). The older 
son has the same type of hand. The father loves his first born, the mother 
the younger. Then the process of creating “them in his own image” 
begins. The world is brought up on the basis largely of shaping the young 
you are attached to as you yourself have been shaped. Well, in this case 
the older becomes a wonderful pianist, the younger an indifferent artist. 
So much for different training or different slanting in youth. But what 
about different structure? Please note this. The younger son, under ordi- 
nary conditions, could not have been trained into a pianist. His fingers 
were not long enough and the muscular arrangement of the hand was not 
flexible enough. But even here we should be cautious—the piano is a 
standard instrument—a certain finger span and a certain hand, wrist and 
finger strength are needed. But suppose the father had been fond of the 
younger child and said, “I want him to be a pianist and I am going to 
try an experiment—his fingers are short—he’ll never have a flexible hand, 
so I'll build him a piano. I'll make the keys narrow so that even with his 
short fingers his span will be sufficient, and I’ll make a different leverage 
for the keys so that no particular strength or even flexibility will be need- 
ed.” Who knows—the younger son under these conditions might have 
become the world’s greatest pianist. 


82 BEHAVIORISM 


Such factors, especially those on the training side, have been wholly 
neglected in the study of inheritance. We have not the facts to build up 
statistics on the inheritance of special types of behavior, and until the 
facts have been brought out by the study of the human young, all data on 
the evolution of different forms of human behavior and eugenics must 
be accepted with the greatest caution. 


Our conclusion, then, is that we have no real evidence of the inherit- 
ance of traits. I would feel perfectly confident in the ultimately favorable 
outcome of careful upbringing of a healthy, well-formed baby born of a 
long line of crooks, murderers and thieves, and prostitutes. Who has any 
evidence to the contrary? Many, many thousands of children yearly, born 
from moral households and steadfast parents become wayward, steal, be- 
come prostitutes, through one mishap or another of nurture. Many more 
thousands of sons and daughters of the wicked grow up to be wicked be- 
cause they couldn’t grow up any other way in such surroundings. But 
let one adopted child who has a bad ancestry go wrong and it is used as 
incontestable evidence for the inheritance of moral turpitude and criminal 
tendencies. As a matter of fact, there has not been a double handful of 
cases in the whole of our civilization of which records have been carefully 
enough kept for us to draw any such conclusions—mental testers, Lom- 
broso, and all other students of criminality to the contrary notwithstanding. 
As a matter of fact adopted children are never brought up as one’s own. 
One cannot use statistics gained from observations in charitable institu- 
tions and orphan asylums. All one needs to do to discount such statistics 
is to go there and work for awhile, and I say this without trying to belittle 
the work of such organizations. 


I should like to go one step further now and say, “Give me a dozen 
healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them 
up in and Ill guarantee to take any one at random and train him to be- 
come any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, 
merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his 
talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. 
I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of 
the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years. 
Please note that when this experiment is made I am to be allowed to specify 
the way the children are to be brought up and the type of world they have 
to live in. 


Where there are structural defects that are inherited, as apparently is 
the case in certain glandular diseases; in “mental’’ defectives; where there 
is intra-uterine infection as in syphillis and in gonorrhea, troublesome be- 


ARE DOE RE OANY HOM AN INSTINCT Se 83 


havior of one kind or another may develop early and rapidly. But some 
of these children haven’t the structural possibilities to be trained—as when 
fundamental connections in body and brain are lacking. Again, where 
there are structural defects more easily observed as in deformities, loss 
of digits, possession of extra digits, etc., there is social inferiority—compe- 
tition on equal grounds is denied. The same is true when “inferior” races 
are brought up along with “superior” races. We have no sure evidence of 
inferiority in the negro race. Yet, educate a white child and a negro child 
in the same school—bring them up in the same family (theoretically with- 
out difference) and when society begins to exert its crushing might, the 
negro cannot compete. 


The truth is society does not like to face facts. Pride of race has 
been strong, hence our Mayflower ancestry—our Daughters of the Revolu- 
tion. We like to boast of our ancestry. It sets us apart. We like to 
think that it takes three generations to make a gentleman (sometimes a 
lot longer!) and that we have more than three behind us. Again, on the 
other hand, the belief in the inheritance of tendencies and traits saves us 
from blame in the training of our young. The mother says when her son 
goes wrong—‘‘Look at his father” or “Look at his grandfather” (which- 
ever one she hates). “What could you expect with that ancestry on his 
father’s side?’ And the father, when the girl shows wayward tendencies 
—‘What can you expect? Her mother has always let every man she came 
in contact with make love to her.” “If these tendencies are inherited we 
can’t be much blamed for it. Traits in the older psychologies are God- 
given and if my boy or girl goes wrong, I as a parent can’t be blamed.” 


The behaviorist has an ax to grind, you say, by being so emphatic? 
Yes, he has—he would like to see the presuppositions and assumptions 
that are blocking, us in our efforts to spend millions of dollars and years 
of patient research on infant psychology removed because then, and only 
then, can we build up a real psychology of mankind, 


Are There Any Instincts? 


Let us, then, forever lay the ghosts of inheritance of aptitudes, of 
“mental” characteristics, of special abilities (not based upon favorable 
structure such as throat formation in singing, hand formation in playing, 
structurally sound eyes and ears, etc., and take up the more general ques- 
tion of what the world has been in the habit of calling instincts. 


1 I say nothing here on the inheritance of acquired behavior characteristics. The evidence in 
biology is all against it. An infant descended from a long line of blacksmith ancestors starts 
with approximately the same puny upper right arm girth as his original blacksmith forbear 
and with cue no iarger than his own left arm. 


84 | BEHAVIORISM 


It is not easy to answer this question. Up to the advent of the be- 
haviorist man was supposed to be a creature of many complicated instincts. 
A group of older writers, under the sway of the newly created theories of 
Darwin, vied with one another in finding new and perfect instincts in both 
man and animals. William James made a careful selection from among 
these asserted instincts and gave man the following list: Climbing, tmita- 
tion, emulation, rivalry, pugnacity, anger, resentment, sympthy, hunting, 
fear, appropriation, acquisttiveness, kleptomania, constructiveness, play, 
curiosity, sociability, shyness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, jealousy, 
parental love. James claims that no other mammal, not even the monkey 
can lay claim to so large a list. 


The behaviorist finds himself wholly unable to agree with James and 
the other psychologists who claim that man has unlearned activities of these 
complicated kinds. But you who are here tonight have been brought up 
on James or possibly even on a worse diet, and it will be hard to dislodge 
his teaching. You say James says an instinct is “a tendency to act in such 
a way as to bring about certain ends without having foresight of those 
ends.” Surely this formulation fits a lot of the early behavior of children 
and young animals. You think you understand it anyway. At first it 
looks convincing. But when you test it out in terms of your own observa- 
tions on young animals and children, you find that you have not a scientific 
definition but a metaphysical assumption. You get lost in the sophistry 
of ‘foresight’ and ‘end’. 


I don’t blame you for being confused. No subject in psychology to- 
day is more written about than the so-called instincts. In the past three 
years more than a hundred articles have been written about instincts. The 
articles in general are of the armchair variety written by men who have 
never watched the whole life history of animals and the early childhood 
of the human young. Philosophy will never answer any questions about 
instincts. The questions asked are factual ones—to be answered only by 
genetic observation. Let me hasten to add that the behaviorist’s knowledge 
of instinct also suffers from lack of observed facts but you cannot accuse 
him of going beyond natural science in his inferences. Before attempting 
to answer the question ‘what is an instinct’ let us take a little journey 
into mechanics, Possibly we may find that we do not need the term after 
all. 


A Lesson From the Boomerang 


I have in my hand a hardwood stick. If I throw it forward and up- 
ward it goes a certain distance and drops to the ground. I retrieve the 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 85 


stick, put in in hot water, bend it at a certain angle, throw it out again—it 
goes outward, revolving as it goes for a short distance, turns to the right 
and then drops down. Again I retrieve the stick, reshape it slightly and 
make its edges convex. I call it a boomerang. Again I throw it upward 
and outward. Again it goes forward revolving as it goes. Suddenly it 
turns, comes back and gracefully and kindly falis at my feet. It is still a 
stick, still made of the same material, but it has been shaped differently. 
Has the boomerang an instinct to return to the hand of the thrower? No? 
Well why does it return? Because it is made in such a way that when it 
is thrown upward and outward with a given force it must return (parallel- 
ogram of forces). Let me call attention to the fact here that all well made 
and well thrown boomerangs will return to or near to the thrower’s feet, 
but no two will follow exactly the same forward pathway or the same 
return pathway, even if shot mechanically with the same application of 
force and at the same elevation, yet they are called boomerangs. This 
example may be a little unusual to you. Let us take one a little easier. 
Most of us have rolled dice now and again. Take a die, load it in a cer- 
tain way, roll it, and the face bearing “six” will always come up when the 
die is thrown. Why? The die must roll that way because of the way it was 
constructed. Again take a toy soldier. Mount it on a semi-circular loaded 
rubber base. No matter how you throw this soldier, he will always bob 
upright, oscillate a bit, then come to a steady vertical position. Has the 
yubber soldier an instinct to stand erect? 


Notice that not until the boomerang, the toy soldier and the die are 
hurled into space do they exhibit their peculiarities of motion. Change 
their form or their structure, or alter greatly the material out of which 
they are made (make them of iron instead of wood or rubber) and their 
characteristic motion may markedly change. But man is made up of cer- 
tain kinds of material put together in certain ways. If he is hurled 
into action (as a result of stimulation) may he not exhibit movement (in 
advance of training) just as peculiar as (but no more mysterious than) 
that of the boomerang ?? 





Concept Of Instinct No Longer Needed In Psychology 


This brings us now to our central thought. If the boomerang has 


1 You will argue that in mechanics action and reaction are equal—that the thrower imparts to the 
boomerang a quantity of energy equal to so many dynes and that just that same quantity of 
energy is used up by the boomerang in returning to the thrower (including the heat loss to 
the air). When I touch a man with a hair, though, and he jumps two feet, the reaction 1s 
out of all proportion to the energy in the stimulus. The explanation is that in man the energy 
used in the reaction was stored. In dynamics you find the same thing when a match touches 
off a powder blast or when a breeze blows a rocking boulder from a cliff and the boulder 
destroys a house in the valley. 


86 BEHAVIORISM 


no instinct (aptitude, capacity, tendency, trait, etc.) to return to the hand 
of the thrower; if we need no mysterious way of accounting for the mo- 
tion of the boomerang, if the laws of physics will account for its motions— 
cannot psychology see in this a much needed lesson in simplicity? Can it 
not dispense with instincts? Can we not say that man is built of certain 
materials put together in certain complex ways, and as a corollary of the 
way he is put together and of the material out of which he 1s made—he 
must act (until learning has reshaped him) as he does act? 


But you say: “That gives your whole argument away—you admit he 
does a lot of things at birth which he is forced to do by his structure— 
this is just what I mean by instinct.” My answer is that we must now 
go to the facts. We can no longer postpone a visit to the nursery. I think 
you will find there, in the study of the infant and child, little that will 
encourage you to keep sacred James’ list of instincts. In the next lecture 
we shall study just what the human offspring does do at birth. 


VI 
ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 


Part II—W hat the Study of the 
Human Young Teaches Us 


Introduction :—I pointed out in my last lecture that most of the prob- 
lems about the unlearned equipment of man can be solved only by a study 
of his life history. This means beginning our study on the newborn human 
infant. It is my sad duty now to have to tell you that we know a great 
deal more about the young of other species of animals than we know about 
the human young. During the past 25 years the students of animal be- 
havior have been gathering a sound body of facts about the young of 
nearly every species of animal except that of man. We have lived with 
young monkeys, we have watched the growth of young rats, rabbits, 
guinea pigs, and birds of many species. We have watched them develop 
daily in our laboratories from the moment of birth to maturity. To check 
our laboratory results we have watched many of them grow up in their 
own native habitat—in a natural environment. 


These studies have enabled us to reach a fair understanding of both 
the unlearned and learned equipment of many species of animals. They 
have taught us that no one by watching the performance of the adult 
can determine what part of a complicated series of acts belongs in the 
unlearned category and what part belongs in the category of the learned. 
Best of all they have given us a method that we can apply to the study of 
the human young. Finally animal studies have taught us that it is not 
safe to generalize from the data we gather on one species as to what will 
be true in another species. For example, the guinea pig is born with a 
heavy coat of fur and with a very complete set of motor responses. It 
becomes practically independent of the mother at three days of age. The 
white rat, on the other hand, is born in a very immature state, has a long 
period of infancy; it becomes independent of the mother only at the end 
of thirty days. Such a wide divergence of birth equipment in two animal 
‘species so closely related (both rodents) proves how unsafe it is to general- 
‘ize, on the basis of infra-human animal studies, as to what the unlearned 
equipment of man is. 


Resistance to the Study of the Human Young 
Until very recently we have had no reliable data on what happens 
during the first few years of human infancy and childhood. Indeed there 


87 


88 BEHAVIORISM 


has been very great resistance to studying the behavior of the human 
young. Society is in the habit of seeing them starve by hundreds, of seeing 
them grow up in dives and slums, without getting particularly wrought 
up about it. But let the hardy behaviorist attempt an experimental study 
of the infant or even begin systematic observation, and criticism begins at 
once. When experiments and observations are made in the maternity 
wards of hospitals there is naturally also considerable misunderstanding of 
the behaviorist’s aims. The child is not sick, the behaviorist is not advanc- 
ing clinical methods—therefore what good are such studies? Again, when 
the parents who have children under observation learn of it they become 
excited. They are ignorant of what you are doing and you have great diffi- 
culty in making them understand what you are doing. These difficulties 
at first confronted us in our work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital but 
thanks to the broadmindedness of Dr. J. Whitridge Williams, Dean of the 
Johns Hopkins Medical School, and of Dr. John Howland, physician-in- 
chief of the Harriet Lane Hospital, a satisfactory condition for study was 
finally arranged. It was arranged in such a way that psychological exami- 
nation of the infants became a part of the regular routine of the care of 
all infants born in the hospital. I mention this because if any of you ever 
attempt to make such studies you will be confronted, until the work has 
become more generally accepted, with a similar set of difficulties, 


Studying the Behavior of the Human Infant 


No one should attempt to make studies upon the infant until he has 
had considerable training in physiology and in animal psychology. He 
should have practical training m the nursery of the hospital where the 
work 1s to be done. In this way he can learn what is safe to do with a 
baby and what is not. Before recording observations he should watch a 
few deliveries. By watching deliveries he will speedily learn that the 
human infant can stand considerable necessary hard usage without break- 
ing under the strain! 


What We Know About Intra-Uterine Behavior 


Our knowledge of the intra-uterine life of the human young is very 
meagre indeed. Intra-uterine life begins with the fertilization of the 
ovum. Recent observations by M. Minkowski, at the University of Zurich, 
upon embryos which have had to be taken from the uterus show that the 
foetus two to two and one-half months of age exhibits considerable move- 
ment of the head, the trunk, and the extremities. The movements are 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 89 


slow, asymmetrical, arhythmic and uncoordinated. Theit' amplitude is 
small. Response to cutaneous stimulation is present, as is also response 
to changes in position of the limbs. The heart beat in the foetus begins to 
show at a much earlier time, often as early as the third week. There is 
some evidence that the stomach glands begin to function at the end of the 
5th month. 


The position of the foetus in the uterus is not without significance 
since it affects the movements and posture of the infant for a considerable 
time after birth. Dr. J. Whitridge Williams describes the intra-uterine 
position of the foetus as follows: “Irrespective of the relation which it 
may bear to the mother, the foetus in the later months of pregnancy 
assumes a characteristic posture, which is described as its attitude or 
habitus; and, as a general rule, it may be said to form an ovoid mass, 
which roughly corresponds with the shape of the uterine cavity. Thus, 
it is folded or bent upon itself in such a way that the back becomes 
markedly convex, the head is sharply flexed so that the chin is almost in 
contact with the breast, the thighs are flexed over the abdomen, the legs 
are bent at the knee-joints, and the arches of the feet rest upon the ante- 
rior surfaces of the legs. The arms are usually crossed over the thorax 
or are parallel to the sides, while the umbilical cord lies in the space be- 
tween them and the lower extremities. This attitude is usually retained 
throughout pregnancy, though it is frequently modified somewhat by the 
movements of the extremities, and in rare instances the head may become 
extended, when a totally different posture is assumed. The characteristic 
attitude results partly from the mode of growth of the foetus, and partly 
from a process of accommodation between it and the outlines of the 
uterine cavity.” (Obstetrics, p. 180.) The extent to which slight differ- 
ences in the intra-uterine position of the foetus may possibly later influ- 
ence or even determine right and left handedness of the individual is not 
known. Attention is called to the fact that the liver is on the right side 
in about 80% of the observed cases. Whether this large organ may swing 
the foetus slightly so that the right side is constantly under less restraint 
than the left is not known. If this is true the infants with the liver on 
the right side should be right-handed from birth. My records on hundreds 
of infants prove that this is not the case. 


In general we get our best information on foetal structures ready 
to function by study of infants prematurely born. At 6 months (lunar) 
the infant may draw a few gasping breaths and make a few abortive move- 
ments. It never lives. From the 7th month on to full term infants may 
live. At birth they display the usual birth equipment. This proves that 


90 BEHAVIORISM 


from the beginning of the 7th month many structures exist in the foetus 
ready to function as soon as the appropriate stimulus is applied: e. g. 
breathing as soon as the air strikes the lungs; complete and independent 
circulation and purification of the blood as soon as the umbilical cord is 
severed; independent metabolism showing that visceral system is ready to 
function, etc, 


The Birth Equipment of the Human Young 


Almost daily observation of several hundred infants from birth 
through the first thirty days of infancy and of a smaller number through 
the first years of childhood has given us the following set of (rough) facts 
on unlearned responses :* 


Sneezing: This apparently can begin in a full-fledged way from 
birth. Sometimes it appears even before the so-called birth cry is given. 
It is one of the responses that stays in the activity stream throughout life 
(see p. 106); habit factors apparently affect it very little indeed. No 
experiments so far have ever been made to see if the mere sight of the 
pepper box may not after a sufficient number of conditioning experiments 
call out sneezing. The normal intra-organic stimulus calling out sneezing 
is not very well defined. Sometimes it occurs when the baby is taken from 
a cooler room into an overheated room. With some babies carrying them 
out into the sunshine apparently will produce sneezing. 


Hiccoughing: ‘This usually does not begin at birth but can be noticed 
in children from 7 days of age on with great ease. Over 50 cases have been 
observed carefully. The earliest noted case of hiccoughing was 6 hours 
after birth. So far as is known this response is rarely conditioned under 
the ordinary conditions of life. The stimulus most commonly calling it 
out apparently is the pressure on the diaphragm coming from a full stom- 
ach. 


Crying: The so-called birth cry takes place at the establishment of 
respiration. The lungs are not inflated until the stimulus of the air is 
present. As the air strikes the lungs and mucous membranes of the up- 
per alimentary tract, the mechanism of breathing is gradually established. 
To establish breathing, the infant has sometimes to be plunged into icy 
water. Coincident with the plunge into the icy water, the cry appears. It 
usually appears during the vigorous rubbing and slapping of the infant’s 





i Mrs. Margaret Gray Blanton, working in the psychological laboratory of the Johns Hopkins 
Hospital has given us our best data upon this subject (Psychological Review, Vol. 24, p. 456). 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 91 


back and buttocks—a method invariably employed to establish respiration. 
The birth cry itself differs markedly in different infants. 


Hunger will bring out crying. Noxious stimuli such as rough han- 
dling, circumcision, or the lancing and care of boils will bring out cries even 
in extremely young infants. When the baby suspends itself with either 
hand crying is usually elicited. 


Crying as such very shortly becomes conditioned. The child quickly 
‘learns that it can control the responses of nurse, parents and attendants, 
by the cry and uses it as a weapon ever thereafter. Crying in infants 
is not always accompanied by tears, although tears can sometimes be ob- 
served as soon as 10 minutes after birth. Owing to the almost universal 
practice now of putting silver nitrate into the eyes shortly after birth, the 
normal appearance of tears is hard to determine. Tears have been ob- 
served, though, on a great many babies from the 4th day on. ‘Tears, in 
all probability, are also conditioned very quickly since they are a much 
more effective means of controlling the movements of nurses and parents 
than is dry crying. 


Numerous experiments have been carried out to see whether the 
crying of one infant in a nursery will serve as a stimulus to set off the 
rest of the children in the nursery. Our results are entirely negative. 
In order to more thoroughly control the conditions, we made phonographic 
records of a lusty crier. We would then reproduce this sound very close 
to the ear of, first, a sleeping infant, then a wakeful but quiet infant. 
The results again were wholly negative. Hunger contractions and noxious 
stimuli (also loud sounds, see Lecture 7) are unquestionably the uncondi- 
tioned stimuli which call out crying. I shall take up crying again in later 
lectures. 


Colic, bringing a set of noxious stimuli, may and usually does call 
out a cry and apparently one slightly different from other types. This 
is due to the pressure in the abdominal cavity caused by the formation of 
gas. The full set of muscles used in the hunger cry is thus not available 
for the colic cry. The cries of infants are so different that at night in a 
nursery of 25 it does not take very long to be able to name the child 
which is crying, regardless of its location in the nursery. 


Erection of Penis: This can occur at birth and from that time on 
throughout life. The complete set of stimuli calling out this response 
is not known. Apparently radiant heat, warm water, stroking of the sex 
organs, possibly pressure from the urine, are the main factors operative at 
birth. This, of course, is conditioned later on in life through visual 


92 BEHAVIORISM 


stimulation and the like. The stimulus to the later appearing orgasm is 
possibly different. Short rhythmical contacts as 1n coition and in mastur- 
bation lead to the orgasm (and after puberty to its attendant ejaculation). 
Probably the orgasm itself both in men and women can be hastened or 
slowed through stimulus substitutions (through words, sounds, etc.—a 
factor of the utmost sociological importance). 


At what age tumescence becomes a conditioned response is not known. 
Masturbation (a better term with infants is manipulation of the penis or 
vagina respectively ) can occur at almost any age. The earliest case I have 
personally observed was a girl around | year of age (it often begins 
much earlier). The infant was sitting up in the bathtub and in reaching 
for the soap accidentally touched the external opening of the vagina with 
her finger. The search for the soap stopped, stroking of the vagina began 
and a smile overspread the face. In the case of neither infant boys nor 
infant girls have I seen masturbation carried to the point where the 
orgasm takes place (it must be remembered that the orgasm can occur 
without ejaculation in the male before the age of puberty is reached). 
Apparently a great many of the muscular responses later to be used in the 
sex act such as pushing, climbing, stroking, are ready to function in the 
male at least at a very much earlier age than we are accustomed to think. 
In one observed case which came into the clinic, a boy of 3% years of 
age would mount his mother or nurse, whichever one happened to be 
sleeping with him. Erection would take place and he would manipulate 
and bite her breasts, then clasping and sex movements similar to those of 
adults would ensue. In this case the mother, who was separated from her 
husband, had deliberately attempted to build up this reaction in her child. 


Voiding of Urine: This occurs from birth. The unconditioned 
stimulus is unquestionably intra-organic due to the pressure of the fluid 
in the bladder. Conditioning of the act of urination can begin as early 
as the second week. Usually, however, conditioning at this age requires 
almost infinite patience. Anywhere from the third month on, the infant 
can be conditioned easily by a little care. If the infant is observed closely 
at intervals of a half hour or so, it will occasionally be found dry. When 
this occurs, place it upon the chamber. If the bladder is quite full, the 
increased pressure which comes from putting the infant in a sitting posi- 
tion will be stimulus enough to release the act. After repeated trials the 
conditioned response is perfected. Young children can be so thoroughly 
conditioned in this act that the response can be called out without awaken- 
ing them. 

Defaecation: This mechanism seems to be perfect from birth and in 
all probability the mechanism was perfected several weeks before birth. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? a 


The stimulus probably is pressure in the lower colon. Pressing a clinical 
thermometer into the anus often brings about the passage of faeces. 


Defaecation can also be conditioned at a very early age. One of the 
methods of course is to introduce a glycerine or soap suppository at the 
time the infant is placed upon the chamber. After considerable repetition 
of this routine, contact with the chamber will be sufficient to call out the 
response. 


Early Eye Movements: Infants from birth when lying flat on their 
backs in a dark room with their heads held horizontally will slowly turn 
their eyes towards a faint light. Movements of the eyes are not very well 
coordinated at birth, but ‘cross eyes’ are not nearly so prevalent as most 
people seem to believe. Right and left coordinated movements of the eyes 
are the first to appear. Upward and downward movements of the eyes 
come ata slightly later period. Still later on a light can be followed when 
revolved in a circle over the baby’s face. 


As is well known, habit factors almost immediately begin to enter 
into fixation and other eye responses. I have already brought out the fact 
that movements both of the lids and of the pupils can be conditioned. 


Smiling: Smiling is due in all probability at first to the presence of 
kinaesthetic and tactual stimuli. It appears as early as the fourth day. It 
can most often be seen after a full feeding. Light touches on parts of 
the body, blowing upon the body, touching the sex organs and sensitive 
zones of the skin are the unconditioned stimuli that will produce smiling. 
Tickling under the chin and a gentle jogging and rocking of the infant 
will often bring out smiling. 


Smiling is the response in which conditioning factors begin to appear 
as early as the thirtieth day. Mrs. Mary Cover Jones has made an exten- 
sive study of smiling. In a large group of children she found that con- 
ditioned smiling—that is, smiling when the experimenter smiles or says 
babyish words to the infant (both auditory and visual factors)—begins to 
appear at around the 30th day. In her total study of 185 cases, the latest 
age at which the conditioned smile first appeared was 80 days. 


Manual Responses: By manual responses hereafter in these lectures 
let us mean different movements of the head, neck, legs, trunk, toes, as well 
as of the arms, hands and fingers. 


Turning the Head: A great many infants at birth if placed stomach 
down with chin on the mattress can swing their heads to right or left and 


94. BEHAVIORISM 


lift their heads from the mattress. We have noticed these reactions from 
30 minutes of age on. On one occasion 15 babies were tested one at a time 
in succession. All except one could make these head reactions. 


Holding up Head when the Infant is held in Upright Position: This 
seems to vary with the development of the head and neck musculature. 
Some newborn infants can support their heads for a few seconds. The 
infant is held in the experimenter’s lap with stomach and back supported. 
There seems to be a rapid improvement in this response due apparently 
to the development of structure rather than to training factors. The head 
can be held up in most infants from the 6th month on, 


od 

Hand Movements at Birth: Marked hand movements in many. chil- 
dren can be observed even at birth, such as closing the hand, opening it, 
spreading the fingers, stretching the fingers of one hand or both hands at 
the same time. Usually in these hand movements the thumb is folded 
inside the palm and takes no part in hand response. It does not begin to 
participate in the movements of the hand until a much later period—around 
the 100th day. I shall speak of grasping, which is also present at birth, 
later on (p. 92). 


Arm Movements: The slightest stimulation of the skin anywhere 
will usually bring out marked arm, wrist, hand, and shoulder responses. 
Apparently kinaesthetic and organic stimuli may bring out these responses 
as well as tactual, auditory and visual stimuli. The arms can be thrown 
up to the face and even as far as the top of the head and down to the legs. 
Usually, however, the first movements of the arms, no matter where the 
stimulus is applied, are towards the chest and head (probably a remnant of 
the intra-uterine habit). One of the most characteristic ways of produc- 
ing violent movements of arms and hands is to hold the nose. In a very few 
seconds one or the other arm or both arms fly upward until the hand 
actually comes in contact with the hand of the experimenter. If one hand 
is held, the other hand will go up just the same. 


Leg and Foot Movements: Kicking is one of the most pronounced 
movements to be seen at birth. It can be brought out by touching the 
soles of the feet, by stimulation with hot or cold air, by contact with the 
skin and directly through kinaesthetic stimulation. One characteristic 
way of producing leg and foot movements is to pinch the skin over the 
knee. If the left leg is held out straight and the knee cap pinched, the 
right foot comes up and in contact with the experimenter’s fingers. When 
the inside of the right knee is pinched, the left leg goes up and strikes the 
experimenter’s fingers. This will appear perfectly at birth. Sometimes it 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 95 


takes only a few seconds for the foot to be brought up as far as the experi- 
menter’s fingers. 


Trunk, Leg, Foot and Toe Movements: When an infant is suspend- 
ing itself with either right or left hand, marked “climbing” motions in the 
trunk and hips are noticeable. There seems to be a wave of contraction 
pulling the trunk and legs upward followed by a relaxation period, then 
another wave of contraction sets in. Tickling the foot, stimulating 
the foot with hot water, will produce marked movements in foot and toes. 
Usually if the bottom of the foot is stimulated with a match stick, the 
characteristic Babinski reflex appears in nearly all infants. This is a 
variable reflex. The usual pattern is an upward jump of the great toe 
(extension) and a drawing down of the other toes (flexion). Occasion- 
ally the Babinski takes the form merely of “fanning,” that is, spreading 
of all the toes. The Babinski reflex usually disappears around the end 
of the first year although it may continue longer even in normal children. 
Infants cannot suspend themselves with their toes. A wire or other small 
round object placed under the toes will often produce flexion, that is, a 
closing of the toes, but the slightest pressure will release the rod or wire. 


Many infants almost from birth can turn over from face to back 
when placed naked face downward on an unyielding surface. Mrs. 
Blanton describes one case as follows: Subject T, at 7 days of age, 
turned repeatedly from face to back when not impeded by clothing. 
Placed face downward on an unyielding surface, her arms in line 
with her body, she would immediately start crying. Relaxing and con- 
tracting of the muscles of the legs, arms, abdomen and back are natural 
accompaniments of crying. During the act she pulled her knees under 
her and contracted her muscles generally, then relaxed them. Gradually, 
owing to the unequal activity of the two sides of the body, she would 
finally come to lie nearer to one side of the body—a final spasm of 
muscular effort would put her over. In one case it took 10 minutes to 
effect the turn and 9 separate spasms. 


Picture here all of the hundreds of partial responses called out in the 
general larger act of turning over. Here again, habit very quickly sets 
in and the response becomes sharper and sharper with the dropping away 
of many of the part reactions. It takes many weeks and months for an 
infant to learn to turn over quickly and with a minimum of muscular effort. 


Feeding Responses: Touching the face of a hungry baby at the cor- 
ners of the mouth or on the cheek or on the chin, will cause quick, jerky 
head movements which result in bringing the mouth near the source of 


96 BEHAVIORISM 


stimulation. This has been observed many, many times from 5 hours 
of age onward. The lip or sucking reflex is another characteristic re- 
sponse. Tapping slightly with the tip of the finger below or above the 
corner of the mouth of a sleeping baby may bring the lips and tongue 
almost immediately into the nursing position. Suckling as such varies 
tremendously in young infants. It can be demonstrated in practically 
every infant within the first hour after birth. Occasionally when there is 
marked injury during birth suckling is retarded. The feeding response 
as such includes sucking, tongue, lip and cheek movements and swallowing. 
With most newborn infants this mechanism, unless there is birth injury 
(or possibly when the parents are “feeble-minded’’) is fairly perfect. 


The whole group of feeding responses can be easily conditioned. 
Conditioning can be most easily observed in a bottle fed baby. Even be- 
fore reaching (occurring around the 120th day) the infant will get extreme- 
ly active in its bodily “squirmings” the instant the bottle is shown. After 
reaching has developed, the mere sight of the bottle will call out the lusti- 
est kind of bodily movements and crying begins immediately. So sensi- 
tive do infants become to the visual stimulus of the bottle that if it is 
shown from 12 to 15 feet away, the response begins to appear. There are 
many, many other conditioned factors in connection with feeding which 
I wish I had time to go into—negative reactions to food, food tantrums, 
and the like. Most of these, so far as I can judge, are purely conditioned 
responses. 


Crawling: Crawling is an indeterminate kind of response. Many 
infants never crawl at all, and all of them exhibit different behavior in 
crawling. After many experiments I am inclined to believe that crawling 
comes largely as a result of a habit formation. When the infant is placed 
face downward, the contact and kinaesthetic stimuli bring out very general 
bodily activity. Oftentimes one side of the body is more active than the 
opposite side; circular (circus) motions result. In one 9 months old infant, 
turning in a circle resulted for days but no forward progress could be 
observed. In this gradual twisting and turning of the body, the child 
sometimes moves right, sometimes left, sometimes forward, and sometimes 
backward. If, in these movements, it manages to reach and manipulate 
some object, we have practically a situation like that of the hungry rat 
in a maze that has food at its center. A habit of crawling toward objects 
results. Crawling probably could always be taught if teaching were 
regularly instituted with the milk bottle as the stimulus. Our daily 
test is conducted as follows. The naked infant is placed on the carpet. 
His legs are extended and a mark is set at the furthest reach of the toes. 
Then a nursing bottle or a lump of sugar (previously conditioning him on 


ARE THERE ANY HUOMANGINS TING ES ¢ 97 


sugar so that he will struggle for it) is put just out of reach of the hands. 
Five minutes is enough for the test. Sometimes at the end of the test if 
crawling does not appear an electric heater is placed a few feet behind 
him. This merely hastens general bodily activity. 


Standing and Walking: The whole complex mechanism of standing 
upright first with support, then without support, then walking, then run- 
ning, then jumping, is a very slowly developing one. ‘The start of the 
whole mechanism seems to lie in the development of the so-called “exten- 
sor thrust.” The extensor thrust is not usually present during the first 
few months of infancy. Some months after birth if the infant is gradually 
lifted up by the arms to nearly a standing position with a part of its feet 
in contact with the floor at all times, there comes, as weight falls on the 
feet, a stiffening of the muscles of both legs. Soon after the appearance 
of this reflex, the child begins to attempt to pull itself up. Between 7 and 
8 months of age many infants can pull themselves up with very little help 
and can support themselves in a standing position holding on to some ob- 
ject for a short space of time. After this feat has been accomplished, the 
next stage in the general process is walking around holding on to an 
object. The final stage is the first step alone. The first step alone occurs 
at very variable times, depending upon the weight of the baby, its general 
health, whether or not it has had serious mishaps through falling (con- 
ditioning). Often the first step is taken at 1 year of age and sometimes 
slightly earlier. In the most completely observed case in my records the 
first step was taken at the end of 11 months and 3 days. After the first 
step is taken the remainder of the act has to be learned fust as the 
youth learns to “balance” himself in bicycle riding, swimming, skating, 
and tight rope walking. Two factors seem to go hand in hand in the de- 
velopment of this mechanism. One is the actual growth of body tissue, the 
other is habit formation. The act can be hastened by coaching (positive 
conditioning) ; it can be markedly retarded at almost any of these stages 
if the infant falls and injures itself (negative conditioning). 


Vocal Behavior: The early sounds made by infants and the con- 
ditioning and organization of these sounds into words and speech habits, 
will be taken up in detail in Lecture 10. 


Suimming: Swimming is very largely a process of learning. By 
the time the child first attempts to swim the well-organized habits of using 
arms, legs, hands and trunk are well established. “Balancing,” breathing, 
removal of fear, etc., are the remaining important factors. 


When the new born infant is placed in water at body temperature with 
head only supported above the water, almost no general response is called 


98 BEHAVIORISM 


out. If plunged into cold water, violent general bodily response is called 
out but no movements even approximating swimming appear. 


Grasping: With few exceptions infants at birth can support their 
full weight with either right or left hands. The method we use in testing 
them is to place a small rod about the diameter of a pencil in one or the 
other hand and close the fingers on the rod. This stimulus causes the grasp- 
ing reflex to appear. It usually starts a cry at the same time. Then fingers 
and hands clamp tightly on the rod. During the reaction the infant can be 
completely lifted from the pillow upon which it lies. An assistant places 
her two hands below the infant ready to catch it as it falls back to the 
pillow. The length of time the infant can support itself varies all the way 
from a fraction of a second to more than a minute. The time in a given 
case may vary considerably on different days. 


The reaction is almost invariable from birth until it begins to disappear 
around the 120th day. The time of disappearance of this response varies 
considerably—in observed cases from 80 days to well over 150 days. There 
seems to be a continuance of the reflex in defective infants long after the 
normal period of disappearance. 


Prematurely born infants of 7 and 8 months gestation exhibit the 
reflex in a normal manner. Infants born without cerebral hemispheres 
exhibit the same reaction: in one observed case this was tested from birth 
to death 18 days later. 


How much more than their own weight the infants can support has 
never been tested out but we have made these tests when the infants were 
fully clothed and sometimes slightly weighted. 


This primitive reaction of course finally disappears from the stream 
of activity never to reappear. It gives place as we shall show to the habit 
of handling and manipulation. 


Blinking: Any newborn infant will close the lids when the eye (cor- 
nea) is touched or when a current of air strikes the eye. But no infant at 
birth will “blink”? when a shadow rapidly crosses the eye as when a pencil 
or piece of paper is passed rapidly across the whole field of vision. The 
earliest reaction I have noted occurred on the 65th day. Mrs. Mary Cover 
Jones noted the reaction in one infant at 40 days. 


It apparently appears quite suddenly—it is at first easily “fatigued” 
and is quite variable. Even up to the age of 80 days some infants will not 
blink every time the stimulus is applied. Usually at 100 days the infant 
will blink whenever the stimulus is applied if at least one minute is allowed 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 8) 


between stimulations. This reaction stays in the activity stream until death. 
We cannot prove it yet but this reaction looks to us very much like a 
conditioned visual eyelid response, as follows: 


CU Seen aA eer trees (UE) Re 
Contact with cornea blink 
but objects which touch the eye often cast a shadow, hence 
(QO) Nee ta Ey wean un ne gee (U)R 
Shadow blink 


If this reasoning is correct, blinking at a shadow is not an unlearned 
response. 


Handedness: We have already pointed out the possibility of handed- 
ness being due to the long enforced intra-uterine position of the child 
(really a habit). Studies of handedness can be made from birth on in 
several different ways. 


1, Measurements of right and left anatomical structures such as 
width of right and left wrist, palm, length of forearm, etc. With specially 
devised instruments the measurements have been made upon several hun- 
dred children. The results show that there is no significant difference in 
the right and left measurements. The average error of the measurement 
is greater than each observed difference. 


2. By recording the time of suspension (see Grasping) with left and 
right hand. Care is taken in all such tests to begin work with the right 
hand on one day and with the left on the following day. Chart I (left 
two columns) shows that there is no constancy in time of suspension from 
day to day. 


3. By recording approximately the total amount of work done with 
right and left hands for a given period of time. For this work we use an 
especially devised work adder. This in principle is an escapement wheel 
that works in such a way that no matter how the baby slashes its arms 
about it turns the wheel always in one direction. As the wheel revolves 
it winds up a small lead weight attached to the wheel by a cord. Of 
course there is a separate instrument in use for each hand. At the begin- 
ning of the work period the two weights are let down until they just touch 
the table top. The hands of the baby are then attached. His slashing 
movements begin to wind the ball up. Usually the baby lies naked on its 
back, unstimulated by the observer. At the end of 5 minutes the baby is 
taken out of the apparatus and the height in inches of the two weights 
above the table top is measured. 


100 BEHAVIORISM 


Again when we face the records obtained in this way we find little 
significant difference between the work of the two hands. 




















Subject J 
Chart I 
showing daily record of results on the two hands: 

Age Time of suspension (in seconds) Work done on adders 
in (in inches) 

Days Right Lett Right Pett 
1 P2 | DOG aN 16.16 1375 
2 oie 3.0 25.00 15.00 
5 6 1.4 37.00 36.25 
4 6 4 12.00 15.00 
5 Lie 1.0 15.00 27.00 
6 1.0 Lo P76 16.00 
7 6 OZ 2125 29.37 
8 1.0 2i2 24.16 18.37 
2, 1.8 1.8 Lies 13.00 

10 1.4 6 28.00 9,00 

Average LL 2.08 21.34 19.27 
Longer with right ow. 3 More work with right............ 7 
Bongeriwithimert cc cn 6 More work with left................. 3 
MS CIG Leen Ladin Oe a 1 Equal a 0 


Chart I (right two columns) gives the record of one infant for the first 
ten days of its life. The table as a whole shows the results obtained both 
from the work adder and from suspension. Note that the average time 
of suspension for J. was with right hand 1.16 seconds; with the left 2.08 
seconds. The average work done (average height weight was wound up) 
with right hand was 21.34 inches; with left hand 19.27 inches. On 3 days 
he suspended himself longer with right hand; on 6 days with left hand; 
on 1 day the time of suspension was equal. Note, too, that he wound the 
weight up faster with right hand on 7 days and with left 3 days. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 101 


Thus we see how handedness varies during the first few days of 
infancy. No dependence can be placed in the records of one child. We 
give one record here simply to show the type of results to expect. When 
a distribution curve is made by plotting a large number of such records 
no significant difference can be found between the hands either when time 
of suspension is charted or when total work done on work adders is charted. 
Evidently habit (or some hitherto undetermined structural factor) must 
come in to stabilize it. 


4. Testing handedness by presenting objects after the act of reaching 
has been established: Learning to reach for and to manipulate small 
objects will be taken up in Lecture 9. In this lecture I want you to think 
of an infant 150 to 175 days of age. At the age of approximately 120 days 
you can begin to get the baby to reach for a stick of gaudily striped pepper- 
mint candy. You must first positively condition him to the candy. This 
can be done, long before the habit of reaching is established, by visually 
stimulating the infant with the stick of candy and then putting the candy 
in the mouth or else putting it in the baby’s hands. If the latter is done the 
baby puts the candy in its mouth. Usually by the 160th day the infant 
will reach readily for the candy as soon as it is exhibited. The infant is 
then ready to test for handedness. 


In all I have worked with about 20 babies during this interesting 
period. In making the test the baby is held in the mother’s lap so that both 
hands are equally free. The experimenter stands in front of the baby 
and extends the candy slowly towards the baby at the level of its eyes 
using care to advance on a line between the two hands. When the candy 
gets just within reach (and usually not much before) the two hands get 
active, then one or the other or both are lifted and advanced towards the 
candy. The hand touching it first is noted. 


The results of all our tests of this nature extending from the age of 
150 days to one year show no steady and uniform handedness. Some days 
the right is used more often, some days the left. 


The Conclusior We Draw 

Our whole group of results on handedness leads us to believe that 
there is no fixed differentiation of response in either hand until social 
usage begins to establish handedness. Society soon thereafter steps in 
and says “Thou shalt use thy right hand.” Pressure promptly begins. 
“Shake hands with your right hand, Willy.” We hold the infant so that 
it will wave “bye bye” with the right hand. We force it to eat with the 
right hand. This in itself is a potent enough conditioning factor to account 
for handedness. But you say “Why is society right handed?” This prob- 


102 BEHAVIORISM 


ably goes back to primitive days. One old theory often advanced is prob- 
ably the true one. The heart is on the left side. It was easy enough for 
our most primitive ancestors to learn that the men who carried their shields 
with the left hand and jabbed with or hurled their spears with the right 
were the ones who more often came back bearing their shields rather than 
being borne upon them. If there is any truth in this it is easy enough to 
see why our primitive ancestors began to teach their young to be right 
handed. 

Long before the shield was put aside the day of manuscripts and 
books had come; and long before that the strolling bards and minstrels 
had orally crystallized the tradition. The strong right arm has become a 
part of our legends of the hero. All of our implements—candle snuffers, 
scissors and the like were and are made for right handed people. 

If handedness is a habit socially instilled, should we or should we not 
change over the left handers—those hardy souls who have resisted social 
pressure? I am firmly convinced that if the job is done early enough and 
wisely enough not the slightest harm results. I should want to do it before 
language develops very much. In a later lecture I will attempt to prove 
to you that from the beginning we begin to verbalize our acts—that is put 
acts into words and vice versa. Now changing over a left handed, talking 
child suddenly into a right handed child is likely to reduce the child to the 
level of a6 months old infant. By interfering constantly with his acts you 
break down his manual habits and you may simultaneously interfere with 
speech (since the word and the manual act are simultaneously condi- 
tioned). In other words, while he is relearning he will fumble not only 
with his hands but also with his speech. The child is reduced to sheer 
infancy again. The unorganized (emotional) visceral control of the body 
as a whole again becomes predominant, It takes wiser handling to change 
the child over at this age than the average parent or teacher is prepared 
to give. 

The main problem is, I believe, settled : handedness is not an “instinct.” 
It is possibly not even structurally determined. It is socially conditioned. 
But why we have 5% of out and out left handers and from 10-15% who 
are mixtures—e. g. using right hand to throw a ball, write or eat, but the 
left hand to guide an axe or hoe, etc.—is not known. 
aera aeeverat factors which must be noted and followed through. Thumb, fingers and 

hand sucking are present in many infants and often unless very wisely handled last into late 
childhood. Usually but not always one or the other hand is fairly steadily used. One 


would expect the hand not used in thumb sucking to quickly become more facile in the 
manipulation of objects. : é 

Again, sometimes for months the infant reaching the standing stage holds on with one or 
the other hand—possibly indeed with the better trained, stronger hand! During this period 
the other hand is left free. It may overtake or even surpass the hand slowed up from 
non-use. Questionnaires and statistical studies upon adults will never throw any light upon 


the problem. 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? = 103 


Summary of Unlearned Equipment 


Although our studies of man’s birth equipment have only begun, we 
can get a fair picture of the type of activity to be seen and of the method 
of studying this equipment by what I have just told you. 


At birth or soon thereafter we find nearly all of the so-called clinical 
neurological signs or reflexes established such as the reaction of the pupil 
to light, the patellar reflex and many others. 


We find the birth cry followed by breathing; the heart beat and all 
circulatory phenomena, such as vaso-motor constriction (decrease in 
diameter of vessels) and dilatation, pulse beat, etc. Beginning with the 
alimentary tract we find sucking, tongue movements, and swallowing. We 
find hunger contractions, digestion, necessitating glandular reactions 
in the whole alimentary tract, and elimination (defaecation, urination, 
sweat). The acts of smiling, sneezing, hiccoughing belong in part 
at least to the alimentary canal system. We find also erection of the penis. 


We find general movements of the trunk, head and neck best observed 
so far as the trunk is concerned when the infant suspends himself with 
the hands. Rhythmical “climbing” movements then appear. We can see 
the trunk at work in breathing, when the infant cries, during defaecation 
and urination, when turning over or when the head is raised or turned. 


We find the arms, wrist, hands and fingers in almost ceaseless activity 
(the thumb rarely taking part until later). In this activity especially are 
to be noted, grasping, opening and closing hands repeatedly, “slashing” 
about of whole arm, putting hand or fingers into mouth, throwing arm 
and fingers to face when nose is held. 


We find the legs, ankles, foot and fingers in almost ceaseless movement 
except in sleep and even during sleep if external (and internal) stimuli are 
present. The knee can be bent, leg moved at hip, ankle turned, toes spread, 
etc. If the bottom of the foot is touched there is a characteristic movement 
of the toes (Babinski reflex) ; if the left knee is pinched the right foot is 
brought up to the point of stimulation and vice versa. 


Other activities appear at a later stage—such as blinking, reaching, 
nandling, handedness, crawling, standing, sitting up, walking, running, 
jumping. Jn the great majority of these later activities it is difficult to 
say how much of the act as a whole is due to training or conditioning. A 
considerable part is unquestionably due to the growth changes in structure, 
and the remainder is due to training and conditioning. 


104 BEHAVIORISM 


What Has Become of Instincts 


Are we not ready to admit that the whole concept of instinct is thus 
academic and meaningless? Even from the earliest moment we find habit 
factors present—present even in many acts so apparently simple that we 
used to call them physiological reflexes. Now turn back to James’ list of 
instincts on p. 84 or turn to any other list of instincts. The infant is a 
graduate student in the subject of learned responses (he is multitudinously 
conditioned) by the time behavior such as James describes—imitation, 
rivalry, cleanliness, and the other forms he lists—can be observed. 


Actual observation thus makes it impossible for us any longer to 
entertain the concept of instinct. We have seen that every act has a 
genetic history. Is not the only correct scientific procedure then to single 
out for study whatever act is in question and to watch and record its life 
history ? 


Take smiling. It begins at birth—aroused by intra-organic stimula- 
tion and by contact. Quickly it becomes conditioned, the sight of the 
mother calls it out, then vocal stimuli, finally pictures, then words and then 
life situations either viewed, told or read about. Naturally what we laugh 
at, whom we laugh at and with whom we laugh are determined by our 
whole life history of special conditionings. No theory is required to ex- 
plain it—only a systematic observation of genetic facts. All the elaborate 
nonsense the Freudians have written on humor and laughter is just so 
much chaff which will be blown aside as observation brings out the facts. 


Again take manipulation. It starts at 120 days, becomes smooth, sharp 
and facile at 6 months. It can be built up in a thousand ways, depending 
upon the time allowed for it, the toys the infant plays with, whether the 
infant is hurt by any of its toys, whether it is frightened by loud sounds 
often at the time it is handling its toys. To argue for a so-called “con- 
structive building instinct’ apart from early training factors is to leave 
the world of facts. 


Again there is a similar printed collection of meaningless material in 
educative propaganda—taking the form of “let the child develop its own 
inward nature.” Other phrases expressive of this mystical inner life of 
bents and instincts are “‘self-realization,”’ “self-expression,” “untutored 
life’ (of the savage, for example), the “brute instincts,” “man’s baser 
self,” ‘elemental facts,” etc. Such writers as Albert Payson Terhune, 
Jack London, Rex Beach and Edgar Rice Burroughs, owe the response 
they call out from their public to the organization laid down by social 


PR DEER ANY EU MAN INS PING TS ai) 105 


traditions (especially through taboos upon sex) aided and supported by 
the misconceptions of the psychologists themselves. 


In order that you may more easily grasp one of the central principles 
of behaviorism—viz. that all complex behavior is a growth or development 
out of simple responses, I want to introduce here the notion of “activity 
stream,” 


The Activity Stream as a Substitute for James’ “Stream of Consciousness” 


Most of you are familiar with William James’ classic chapter on the 
stream of consciousness. We have all loved that chapter. Today it seems 
as much out of touch with modern psychology as the stage coach would be 
with modern New York’s Fifth Avenue. The stage coach was picturesque 
but it has given place to a more effective means of transportation. In this 
lecture I want to give you something in place of James’ classical contribu- 
tion; less picturesque but more adequate to the facts. 


We have passed in review many of the known facts on the early 
behavior of the human infant. Let us draw a diagram to represent the 
increasingly complex whole of man’s organization. This picture will be 
very incomplete for several reasons. In the first place we have room on 
the chart to show only a few of those activities. In the second place our 
studies are not complete enough to draw an adequate chart even if we had 
the space, and finally we have not yet taken up in the lectures man’s visceral 
and emotional equipment, his manual habits and his language habits. 


In spite of these handicaps, though, try to think of a complete life 
chart—of the ceaseless stream of activity beginning when the egg is fer- 
tilized and ever becoming more complex as age increases. Some of the 
unlearned acts we perform are shortlived—they stay in the stream only a 
little time—such, for example, as suckling, unlearned grasping (as opposed 
to learned grasping and manipulation) extension of the great toe (Babin- 
ski), etc., then disappear forever from the stream. Try to think of 
others beginning later in life, e. g. blinking, menstruation, ejaculation, etc., 
and remaining in the stream—blinking until death, menstruation until from, 
say, 45-55 years, then disappearing; the act of ejaculation remaining on 
the chart of the male until the 70th-80th years or even longer. 


But try hardest of all to think of each unlearned act as becoming 
conditioned shortly after birth—even our respiration and circulation. Try 
to remember, too, that the unlearned movements of arms, hands, trunk, 
legs, feet and toes become organized quickly into our stabilized habits, 









ae 
2S ' 
3X g 
= 
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got Se 
Oe = 
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189 SATs Soe ae 
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on’? “Lp oer er Pere 
vio® Coie iy ease mA 
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b jeezih or 
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HICccoue as KEGPORES, — — 
G REACTIONS canoinoneo FEES" aie 
FEEDIN fn eas ee BE 
Teun AND LEG MOVEMENTS _——cargrrinn (GONE — gi icine EEOND?_ = 
: | ete FANE SINKING SILENT TALKING) _ 
Pea THINKING ESILENT TALKING © _ __ 
nN CIRCULATION AND RESPIRATION 
E L_ — , COND. RESPIRATION AND CIRCULATION 
= GRASPING nary mee nae oni eriomas email or 
hy REACHING AND MANIPU 
ORL ae Mana ee shee LAT) 
RTA es Ree ON ACTS OF SKILL, VOCATIONS, ETC. COND. 
REFAECATION AND URINATION LUANDE ONES Leonny” 7 oe 
Lhe) 7 —_—_—— ——= «ow oe as 
CRYING AND iene a ELIMINATION RESRS : 
R OUcT Gg a eons 
LAK Se —— 
SMiLing <X ORGAN Ree ry SEAR ACTIVITY 
Lt AND tay, SPONSEs piso 
“ORR CHTER, = Os ie 
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THE ACTIVITY STREAM a | 


Rough diagram showing increasing com- 
plexity of certain human action systems. 
The black solid line shows the unlearned 
beginning of each system. The dotted 
line shows how each system is made com. 
plex by conditioning. 


Some of the systems apparently are not 

modified. They exist in the stream i 
throughout life without increasing in com- 

plexity. 


The chart is neither complete nor accurate. 
Until more thorough genetic work has 
been done, a chart of this kind cannot be 
used as a measuring rod of what to expect 
of infants at different ages. 


106 


ARE THERE ANY HUMAN INSTINCTS? 107 


some of which remain in the stream throughout life, others staying in only 
a short time and then disappearing forever. For example, our 2-year 
habits must give place to 3 and 4-year habits. 


I should like to spend a whole evening upon this chart of human 
activity. It gives you quickly in graphic form the whole scope of psy- 
chology. Every problem the behaviorist works upon has some kind of 
setting in this stream of definite, tangible, actually observable happenings. 
It gives you, too, the fundamental point of view of the behaviorist—viz. 
that in order to understand man you have to understand the life history of 
his activities. It shows too most convincingly that psychology is a natural 
science—a definite part of biology. 


In our next two lectures we shall see whether at the hands of the 
behaviorist the case for human emotions fares better than that for instincts. 


VII 
EMOTIONS 


What Emotions Are We Born With— 
How Do We Acquire New Ones— 
How Do We Lose Our Old Ones? 


Part I—A General Survey of the Field and Some 
Experimental Studies 


The last two chapters have shown us that the current psychological » 
view of instincts is not in harmony with the experimental findings of the 
behaviorist. Can the case for the present conception of emotions be made 
out any better? Probably no subject, unless it be that of instinct, has been 
more written about than emotions. Indeed the awe-inspiring number 
of volumes and papers and journals produced by Freudians and post- 
Freudians in the last 20 years would fill a good-sized room. And yet 
the behaviorist, as he reads through this great mass of literature cannot 
but feel in it a lack of any central scientific viewpoint. Not until his 
own genetic studies, started less than 10 years ago, began to bear fruit. 
did it become apparent to the behaviorist that he could simplify the prob- 
lems of emotion and apply objective experimental methods to their solu- 
tion. Since most of you have been brought up on James’ “theory” of the 
emotions, let us start with him. Pointing out the weakness of his position 
will be the easiest way to convince you that the behaviorist has some- 
thing genuine to contribute both on methods and in results. 


James’ Introverted Viewpoint about Emotions 


Nearly 40 years ago James gave the psychology of the emotions a 
setback from which it has only recently begun to recover. Before James’ 
time, Darwin had a much saner viewpoint. The physiologist, Lange, also 
kept close to the true pathway. I quote here a part of Lange’s famous 
passage on “‘Grief”’: 


_. By this the grieving person gets his outward stamp; he walks slowly, un- 
steadily, dragging his feet and hanging his arms. His voice is weak and without 
resonance, in consequence of the feeble activity of the muscles of expiration and of 
the larynx. He prefers to sit still, sunk in himself and silent. The tonicity or 


108 


EMOTIONS 109 


‘latent innervation’ of the muscles is strikingly diminished. The neck is bent, the 
head hangs (‘bowed down’ with grief), the relaxation of the cheek- and jaw- 
muscles makes the face look long and narrow, the jaw may even hang open. The 
eyes appear large, as is always the case where the orbicularis muscle is paralyzed, but 
they may often be partly covered by the upper lid which droops in consequence of 
the laming of its own levator.” . .. . . . “But this weakness of the entire 
voluntary motor apparatus (the so-called apparatus of ‘animal’ life) is only one 
side of the physiology of grief. Another side, hardly less important, and in its 
consequences perhaps even more so, belongs to another subdivision of the motor 
apparatus, namely, the involuntary or ‘organic’ muscles, especially those which are 
found in the walls of the blood-vessels, and the use of which is, by contracting, to 
diminish the latter’s calibre. These muscles and their nerves, forming together the 
‘vaso-motor apparatus,’ act in grief contrarily to the voluntary motor apparatus. 
Instead of being paralyzed, like the latter, the vascular muscles are more strongly 
contracted than usual, so that the tissues and organs of the body become anaemic. 
The immediate consequence of this bloodlessness is pallor and shrunkenness, and the 
pale color and collapsed features are the peculiarities which, in connection with the 
relaxation of the visage, give to the victim of grief his characteristic physiognomy, 
and often give an impression of emaciation which ensues too rapidly to be possibly 
due to real disturbance of nutrition, or waste uncompensated by repair. Another 
regular consequence of the bloodlessness of the skin is a feeling of cold, and shiver- 
ing. A constant symptom of grief is sensitiveness to cold, and difficulty in keeping 
warm. In grief, the inner organs are unquestionably anaemic as well as the skin. 
This is of course not obvious to the eye, but many phenomena prove it. Such is 
the diminution of the various secretions, at least of such as are accessible to obser- 
vation. The mouth grows dry, the tongue sticky, and a bitter taste ensues which, 
it would appear, is only a consequence of the tongue’s dryness. (The expression 
‘bitter sorrow’ may possibly arise from this.) In nursing women the milk diminishes 
or altogether dries up. There is one of the most regular manifestations of grief, 
which apparently contradicts these other physiological phenomena, and that is the 
weeping, with its profuse secretion of tears, its swollen, reddened face, red eyes, 
and augmented secretion from the nasal mucous membrane.” 


Allowing for the fact that Lange worked many years before the days of 
the behaviorist, we see that his method was headed in the right direc- 
tion, at least it was an observational one. It yielded an objective descrip- 
tion of the various part reactions entering into that general group of re- 
sponses, the whole of which we popularly call grief. 

Again, take Darwin’s description of fear: 


“The frightened man at first stands like a statue, motionless and breathless, 
or crouches down as if instinctively to escape observation. The heart beats quickly 
and violently, so that it palpitates or knocks against the ribs; but it is very doubtful 
if it then works more efficiently than usual so as to send a greater supply of blood 
to all parts of the body; for the skin instantly becomes pale as during incipient 
faintness. This paleness of the surface, however, is probably in large part, or is 
exclusively, due to the vaso-motor centre being affected in such a manner as to 
cause the contraction of the small arteries of the skin. That the skin is much 
affected under the sense of great fear, we see in the marvelous manner in which 
perspiration immediately exudes from it. This exudation is all the more remark- 
able, as the surface is then cold, and hence the term, a cold sweat; whereas when the 


110 BEHAVIORISM 


sudorific glands are properly excited into action the surface is heated. The hairs 
also on the skin stand erect, and the superficial muscles shiver. In connection 
with the disturbed action of the heart the breathing is hurried. The salivary glands 
act imperfectly; the mouth becomes dry and is often opened and shut. I have 
also noticed that under slight fear there is strong tendency to yawn. One of the 
best marked symptoms is the trembling of all the muscles of the body; and this is 
often first seen in the lips. From this cause, and from the dryness of the mouth, the 
voice becomes husky or indistinct or may altogether fail. ‘Obstupui steteruntque 
comae, et vox faucibus haesit. . . As fear increases into an agony of terror, 
we behold, as under all violent emotions, diversified results. The heart beats 
wildly or must fail to act and faintness ensue; there is a death-like pallor; the 
breathing is labored; the wings of the nostrils are widely dilated; there is a gasping 
and convulsive motion of the lips. a tremor on the hollow cheek. a gulping and 
catching of the throat; the uncovered and protruding eyeballs are fixed on the 
object of terror; or they may roll restlessly from side to side, huc illuc volens oculos 
totumque pererrat. The pupils are said to be enormously dilated. All the muscles 
of the body may become rigid or may be thrown into convulsive movements. The 
hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a twitching movement. The 
arms may be protruded as if to avert some dreadful danger, or may be thrown 
wildly over the head. The Rev. Mr. Hagenauer has seen this latter action in a terri- 
fied Australian. In other cases there is a sudden and uncontrollable tendency to 
headlong flight; and so strong is this that the boldest soldiers may be seized with 
a sudden panic.” 


Take Sig. Mantegazza’s description of hatred: 


“Withdrawal of the head backwards, withdrawal of the trunk; projection 
forwards of the hands, as if to defend one’s self against the hated object : contrac- 
tion or closure of the eyes; elevation of the upper lip and closure of the nose,— 
these are all elementary movements of turning away. Next, threatening movements, 
as: intense frowning; eyes wide open; display of teeth; grinding teeth and contract- 
ing jaws; opened mouth with tongue advanced; clenched fists; threatening action 
of arms; stamping with the feet; deep inspirations—panting ; growling and various 
cries; automatic repetition of one word or syllable; sudden weakness and trembling 
of voice; spitting. Finally, various miscellaneous reactions and vaso-motor symp- 
toms; general trembling; convulsions of lips and facial muscles, of limbs and of 
trunk; acts of violence to one’s self, as biting fist or nails; sardonic laughter; bright 
redness of face; sudden pallor of face; extreme dilation of nostrils; standing up 
of hair on head.” 


You can see in all of these descriptions a systematic observation of 
what happens in emotional reactions. Let me say here that I do not wish 
to imply by quoting from these authors that I agree with their theoretical 
points of view. I quote merely to show that they were willing to observe 
people objectively in an emotional state. 


But close to the truth as was the method of the older biologists, 
James would have none of it. He says in comment upon these very 
excerpts: “The result of all this flux is that the merely descriptive litera- 
ture of the emotions is one of the most tedious parts of psychology. 


EMOTIONS 111 


And not only is it tedious, but you feel that its subdivisions are to a great 
extent either fictitious or unimportant, and that its pretenses to accuracy 
are a sham.” He sought for a formula—a verbal container into which he 
could toss every separate emotion. To use his own simile, he sought to 
capture the goose that lays the golden egg, “for then,” says he, “the de- 
scription of each egg laid is a minor matter.” 


James’ Goose Which Lays the Golden Eggs 


James found such a formula. Here it is. “My theory, on the con- 
trary, is that the bodily changes follow. directly the perception of the 
exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS 
the emotions.” His proof for this formulation? Merely a bit of intro- 
specting that leads him to make the further statement which he says is the 
vital point of his whole theory: “If we fancy some strong emotion, and 
then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of tts 
bodily symptoms, we find that we have nothing left behind, no ‘mind-stuff’ 
out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral 
state of intellectual perception is all that remains.” Thus we see that 
according to James the best way to study emotions is to stand stock still 
while having one and begin to introspect. The result of your introspec- 
tion might take the following form: I have a ‘sensation’ of a slowed heart 
beat—a ‘sensation’ of dryness in my mouth—a group of ‘sensations’ com- 
ing from my legs, etc. This group of ‘sensations’—this conscious state— 
IS the emotion of fear. Each man has to make his own introspections. 
No experimental method of approach is possible. No verification of ob- 
servations is possible. In other words, no scientific objective study of 
emotions is possible. 


Apparently it never occurred to James or to any of his followers 
for that matter, to speculate, much less experiment, upon the genesis of 
the emotional forms of response. To him they were true heritages from 
our primitive ancestors. By this empty, verbal formulation, James 
robbed psychology of perhaps its most beautiful and most interesting field 
of research. He saddled upon the study of the emotions a condition from 
which it can scarcely recover because his formula has been swallowed by 
practically all the leading psychologists in the country who will continue 


1 Prof. Walter S. Hunter in his superhuman efforts to straddle the gulf that divides behaviorism 
from introspectionism uses the verb ‘to be’ in a similar mystical way when he says certain 
types of bodily response ARE consciousness. We are too conversant with the various methods 
the introspectionist uses to conceal his metaphysical difficulties to be misled by so old a device. 
We can, however, smile and admire the sophistry. 


112 BEHAVIORISM 


to teach it for a greater number of years than I can think of with 
equanimity. 


The Current List of Emotions 


Without attempting to use any other method than the introspective 
one, James gives us a list of, first, what he calls the coarser emotions— 
grief, fear, rage, love; and a list of subtler emotions which he says may be 
grouped under the heading of moral, intellectual and aesthetic feelings. 
The latter are entirely too numerous to be separately listed. 


McDougall has made a different grouping. He finds that every prin- 
cipal instinct has a primary emotion coupled with it; for example, the emo- 
tion of fear is coupled with the instinct of flight; the emotion of disgust 
is coupled with the instinct of repulsion; the emotion of wonder with the 
instinct of curiosity; the emotion of anger with the instinct of pugnacity ; 
the emotions of subjection and elation with the instincts of self-abasement 
and self-assertion; the tender emotions coupled with the parental instincts. 
In addition there is a whole group of emotional tendencies less marked in 
character. Since we have already shown that this elaborate group of Mc- 
Dougallian instincts does not exist (as instincts) it would be futile for us 
to consider it further, nor can we spend the time examining all of the lists 
of emotions in other current psychological texts. They are valueless be- 
cause no objective method was used in determining them. 


The Behaviorist’s Approach to the Problem of Emotion 


During the past 8 years the behaviorist has approached the problem of 
emotions from a new angle. In accordance with his usual procedure, he 
decided before beginning work himself to consign to the waste basket the 
work of his predecessors and to start the problem over again. His observa- 
tion of adults soon told him that mature individuals, both men and 
women, display a wide group of reactions which go under the general name 
of emotions. The negro down South whines and trembles at the darkness 
which comes with a total eclipse of the sun, often falling on his knees and 
crying out, begging the Deity to forgive him for his sins. These same 
negroes will not pass through graveyards at night. They cringe and 
shrink when charms and relics are shown. They will not burn wood 
which has been struck by lightning. In rural communities adults and chil- 
dren collect around the home as soon as dusk begins to fall. They often 
rationalize it by saying that they will get the “misery” from the night air. 
Situations of the most ordinary kinds judged from our more sophisticated 
standpoint arouse the strongest kinds of emotional reactions in them. 


EMOTIONS 113 


But let us be even more specific and bring the matter closer home. 
Here is the list of things a 3-year-old youngster in New York fears: Dark- 
ness, all rabbits, rats, dogs, fish, frogs, insects, mechanical animal toys. 
This infant may be playing excitedly with blocks. When a rabbit or other 
animal is introduced, all constructive activity ceases. He crowds towards 
one corner of his pen and begins to cry out “take it away,” “take it away.” 
Another child examined the same day shows a different set. Another may 
show no fear reactions, 


The more the behaviorist goes about examining the sets of reactions of 
adults, the more he finds that the world of objects and situations surround- 
ing people brings out more complex reactions than the efficient use or 
manipulation of the object or situation would call for. In other words, the 
object seems to be ‘charged,’ seems to bring out thousands of accessory 
bodily reactions which the laws of efficient habit do not call for. I can 
illustrate this by the negro’s rabbit foot. For us the rabbit foot is some- 
thing to be cut off from the carcass of the animal and thrown away. One 
might toss it to one’s dog as a part of its food. But to many of the negroes 
the rabbit foot is not an object to be reacted to in this simple way. It is 
dried, polished, put into the pocket, cared for and guarded jealously. He 
examines it now and then; when in trouble he calls upon it for guidance 
and aid, and in general reacts to it not as to a rabbit’s foot but in the same 
way that a religious man reacts to a Deity. 


Civilization to some extent has stripped from man these superfluous 
reactions to objects and situations, but as I pointed out in my first lecture, 
many still persist especially in the realm of religion. Bread is something 
to be eaten when hungry. Wine is something to be drunk with meals or 
on festive occasions. But these simple, commonplace, unemotional objects 
call out kneeling, prayer, bowing of the head, closing of the eyes, and a 
whole mass of other verbal and bodily responses, when fed to the individual 
at church under the guise of communion. The bones and relics of the saints 
may call out in devout religious individuals a set of reactions different 
from those the rabbit foot calls out in the negro but entirely homologous 
(from the standpoint of origin). The behaviorist even goes further and 
investigates his colleagues’ everyday behavior. He finds that a noise in the 
basement at night may reduce his nextdoor neighbors to reactions quite in- 
fantile ; that many of them are shocked when the Lord’s name is “taken in 
vain,’ giving as a rationalization that it is irreverent, ‘that punishment will 
be visited upon the individual so misbehaving. He finds many of them 
walking away from dogs and horses, even though they have to turn back 
or cross the street to avoid coming near them. He finds men and women 


114 BEHAVIORISM 


picking out impossible mates without being able to rationalize the act at all 
in any way. In other words, if we were to take all of life’s objects and 
situations into the laboratory and were to work out a physiologically sound 
and scientific way of reacting to them (experimental ethics may approach 
this some day) and call these forms the norms or standards, and were then 
to examine man’s everyday behavior in the light of such norms, we would 
find divergence from them the rule. Divergence takes the form of acces- 
sory reactions, slowed reactions, non-reactions (paralysis), blocked reac- 
tions, negative reactions, reactions not sanctioned by society (stealing, 
murder, etc.), reactions belonging to other stimuli (substitute).1 It seems 
fair to call all of this group emotional without further defining the word 
at the present time. 


Now as you know, we haven't physiologically standardized norms of 
reactions as yet. There is some approach to it. Progress in physical 
sciences has done much towards standardizing our way of reacting to day 
and night, the seasons, the weather. We no longer react to a tree struck 
by lightning as if it were accursed. We no longer think that we have any 
advantage over our enemy when we come into possession of his nail par- 
ings, hair and excrement. We no longer look upon the blue of the heavens 
above as a kingdom in which super-mundane beings dwell (at least some 
of us hardy souls do not!). We no longer react to distant and almost in- 
visible mountains as if they were the homes of gnomes and fairies. 
Science, geography and travel have standardized our responses. Our 
reactions to foods are becoming standardized through the work of the food 
chemist. We no longer think of any particular form of food as being 
“clean” or “unclean.” We think of it now as fulfilling or not fulfilling 
definite bodily requirements. 


1 Examples: 


Of accessory reactions: The subject does the task quickly and correctly but he becomes pale, 
he may even cry, urinate or defaecate, his mouth glands may become inactive. He reacts 
steadily and correctly in spite of his emotional state. Other examples of accessory reactions 
are whistling, talking, singing, while at work. 


Of slowed reactions: He does the act but his reaction time is increased—he may fumble and 
drop his work, or react with too much or too little energy. Response to questions comes 
slowly or very rapidly. 


Of negative reactions: He may show fear at food—push it away or run away from it himself. 
Instead of the ordinary reactions to dog or horse, the subject may walk away from them. 
Phobias belong in this group. 


Of reactions not sanctioned by society: The subject may in “heat of anger,” for example, com- 
mit murder, injure property. I have in mind here all acts which the law punishes but for 
which it tempers justice with mercy because of emotional factors. 


Of reactions belonging to other stimuli: All homosexual reactions; all sex attacks by sons upon 
their mothers; all sex reactions to fetishes, etc. Emotional responses of parents to children 
masquerading under the guise of natural affection. 


here are, of course, legions of responses we call ‘‘emotional,’’ that cannot be listed under any 
one of these headings. 


EMOTIONS pi 


Our social reactions, however, remain unstandardized. There is even 
no historical guide. Professor Sumner, of Yale, has well pointed this out. 
According to him, every conceivable kind of social reaction has at one time 
or another been considered the ‘normal’ and unemotional way of acting. 
One woman could have many husbands; one man many wives; the off- 
spring could be killed in times of famine; human flesh could be eaten; 
sacrifice of offspring could be made to appease deities; you could lend 
your wife to your neighbor or guest; the wife was acting properly when 
she burned herself on the pyre that consumed her husband’s body. 


Our social reactions are not standardized any better today. Think of 
our 1925 accessory responses when we are in the presence of our parents, 
in front of our social leaders. Think of our hero worship, our veneration 
for the intellectual giant, the author, the artist, the church! Think of the 
way we behave in crowds, at masked parties (Ku Klux as well as social)— 
at football and baseball games, at elections, in religious revivals (conver- 
sions, antics of the holy rollers, etc.), in grief at the loss of loved objects 
and people. We have a host of words to cover these accessory reactions— 
reverence, love of family, of God, of church, of country; respect, adulation, 
awe, enthusiasm. When in the presence of many of these emotional stimuli 
we act like infants. 


How the Behaviorist Works: The complicated nature of all these 
adult responses makes it hopeless for the behaviorist to begin his study of 
emotion upon adults. He has to study emotional behavior genetically. 


Suppose we start with three-year-olds—we will go out into the high- 
ways and byways and collect them; and then let us go to the mansions of the 
rich. We bring them into our laboratory. We put them face to face with 
certain situations. Suppose we first let a boy go alone into a well lighted 
playroom and begin to play with his toys. Suddenly we release a small 
boa constrictor or some other animal. Next we may take him to a dark 
room and suddenly start a miniature bonfire with newspapers. I cannot 
take time tonight to tell you all of the stage settings used by the behaviorist 
in experiments of this type. As you can see we can set the stage so that 
we can duplicate almost any kind of life situation. 


But after testing him alone in all these situations we must test him 
again when an adult, possibly father or mother, is with him—when another 
child of his own age and sex is nearby, when another child of opposite sex 
accompanies him, when groups of children are present. 


In order to get a picture of his emotional behavior, we have to test 
separation from mother. We have to test him with different and uncustom- 


116 BEHAVIORISM 


ary foods, with strange people to feed him, with strange nurses to bathe 
him, clothe him and put him to bed. We must rob him of his toys, of 
things he is playing with. We must let a bigger boy or girl bully him, we 
must put him in high places, on ledges (making injury impossible how- 
ever), on the backs of ponies or dogs. 


I am giving you a picture of how we work just to convince you of the 
simplicity, naturalness and accuracy of our methods—that there is a wide 
field for objective experimentation. 


Brief Summary of Results of Such Tests 


One of the sad things we find by such tests is that even at three 
years of age many (but not all) of the children are shot through with all 
kinds of useless and actually harmful reactions which go under the general 
name emotional. 


They are afraid in many situations They are shy in dozens of 
others. They go into tantrums at being bathed or dressed. They go into 
tantrums when given certain foods—or when a new nurse feeds them. 
They go into crying fits when the mother leaves them. They hide behind 
their mother’s dress. They become shy and silent when visitors come. 
A characteristic picture is to have one hand in the mouth and the other 
grasping the mother’s dress. One fights every child who comes near. He 
is called a bully, a ruffian, sadistic. Another cries and runs away if a 
child half his size threatens him. His parents call him a coward and his 
playmates make him the scapegoat. 


Whence Arise These Varied Forms of Emotional Response? 


A child three years of age is very young. Must we conclude that 
emotional reactions are hereditary? Is there an hereditary pattern of love, 
of fear, rage, shame, shyness, humor, anger, jealousy, timidity, awe, rever- 
ence, admiration, cruelty? Or are these just words to describe general 
types of behavior without implying anything as to their origin? Historic- 
ally they have been considered hereditary in origin. To answer the ques- 
tion scientifically, we need new methods of experimentation. 


1 Mrs. Mary Cover Jones reports that in the work with the ‘older children at the Heckscher 
Foundation, the frog especially, when its suddenly jumps, is the most potent stimulus of all in 
bringing out fear reactions. The most pronounced reactions were called out from the children 
by an animal when it was come upon suddenly. For this reason the smaller animals were 
often left around the room concealed in boxes. General manipulation of objects in the room 
lead the child sooner or later to the sudden uncovering of the animal. 


EMOTIONS 117 


Experiments Upon the Origin and Growth of Emotional Reactions 


In our experimental work we early reached the conclusion that young 
children taken at random from homes both of the poor and of the well-to- 
do do not make good subjects for the study of the origin of emotions. 
Their emotional behavior is too complex. Fortunately we have been able 
to study a number of strong healthy children belonging to wet nurses in 
hospitals, and other children brought up in the home under the eye of the 
experimenters. Several of these children were observed from approxi- 
mately birth through the first year, others through the second year and two 
or three children through the third year. I wish to give you an account of 
these studies. | 


In putting these hospital reared children through emotional situations 
we usually had the older ones sit in small infants’ chairs. If the infant 
was very small—too young to sit up—we allowed it to sit in the lap of the 
mother or that of an attendant. 


(a) Reactions to Animals in the Laboratory: We fitst took the chil- 
dren to the laboratory and put them through the routine of tests with various 
animals. We had the laboratory so arranged that they could be tested in 
the open room, alone; with an attendant; with the mother. They were 
tested in the dark room, the walls of which were painted black. This room 
was bare of furniture. It offered an unusual situation in itself. In the 
dark room we had conditions so arranged that we could turn on a light 
behind the infant’s head or illuminate the room with the light in front of 
and above the infant. The infants were always tested one at a time. The 
following group of situations was usually presented: 


First, a lively black cat invariably affectionately aggressive, was 
shown. The cat never ceased its purring. It climbed over and walked 
around the infant many times during the course of each test, rubbing its 
body against the infant in the usual feline way. So many false notions 
have grown up around the response of infants to furry animals that we 
were surprised ourselves to see these youngsters positive always in their 
behavior toward this proverbial ‘black cat.’ Reaching out to touch the cat’s 
fur, eyes and nose was the invariable response, 


A rabbit was always presented. This, likewise, in every case called 
out manipulatory responses and nothing else. Catching the ears of the 
animal in one hand and attempting to put it in the mouth was one of the 
favorite responses. 


118 BEHAVIORISM 


Another furry animal invariably used was the white rat. This, pos- 
sibly on account of its size and whiteness, rarely called out continued fixa- 
tion of the eyes of the infant. When, however, the animal was fixated, 
reaching occurred. 


Airedale dogs, large and small, were also presented. The dogs were 
also very friendly. The dogs rarely called out the amount of manipulatory 
response that an animal the size of the cat and rabbit called out. Not even 
when the children were tested with these animals in the dark room, either in 
full illumination or with a dim light behind the head of the child, was any 
fear response evoked. 


These tests on children not emotionally conditioned proved to us con- 
clusively that the classical illustrations of hereditary responses to furry 
objects and animals are just old wives’ tales. 


Next a feathery animal was used, usually a pigeon. The pigeon was 
presented first in a paper bag. This was a rather unusual situation even 
for an adult. The bird struggled and in struggling would move the bag 
around the couch. Oftentimes it would coo. While the pigeon was rattling 
and moving the paper bag about, the child rarely reached for the bag. The 
moment, however, the pigeon was taken into the experimenter’s hands, the 
usual manipulatory responses were called forth. We have even had the 
pigeon moving and flapping its wings near the baby’s face. This can be 
done easily by holding the pigeon by its feet, head down. Under these 
conditions even an adult will sometimes dodge and flinch a bit. When the 
wings fanned the infant’s eyes, blinking was usually called out. Hesitation 
in response and failure to reach occur. When the bird quieted down, 
reaching began, 


Another form of test which we have often made under these same 
conditions, was the lighting of a small newspaper bonfire both out in the 
open room and in the dark room. In several cases when the paper first 
caught fire, the infant reached eagerly toward the flame and had to be 
restrained. As soon, however, as the fire became hot, reaching and manipu- 
latory responses died down. At such times the infant may sit with hands 
partly up in a position that looks almost like the start of the shading reac- 
tion that the adult uses when coming too close to a fire. There isn’t much 
question that this type of habit would have developed if the experiment 
had been repeated often. It probably is entirely similar to the reaction 
animals and humans make to the sun. When the sun gets too hot and they 
are not active they move into whatever shade is available. 


EMOTIONS 119 


(6) To Animals in Zoological Parks: On several occasions hospital 
reared children and home reared children whose emotional history was 
known, have been taken to zoological parks—always as a first experience. 
The children under observation were not pronounced in any of their reac- 
tions in the zoological park. Every effort was made to give them a good 
presentation of those animals which apparently have played considerable 
part in the biological history of the human. For example, a great deal of 
time was spent in the primates’ house. Considerable time was spent also 
in the rooms where reptiles, frogs, turtles, and snakes were kept. In such 
tests I have never got the slightest negative reaction to frogs and snakes, 
although the jumping frog, to children who have been conditioned, is an 
extremely strong stimulus in bringing out fear responses as I pointed out 
a moment ago (p. 116). 


In the summer of 1924, I took my own two children to the Bronx 
Zoological Park. The older child, B, was a boy 2% years of age. The 
younger child, J, was a boy 7 months of age. The younger child was 
without conditioned emotional fear responses. The older child had been 
conditioned but ina known way. For example, the first time he was taken 
into water up over his neck, he showed fear (I am sure that the so-called 
fear of the water is the same type of response that we get from loss of 
support). Before his trip to the Park he had seen horses, dogs, cats, pig- 
eons, English sparrows, sea gulls, toads, worms, caterpillars and butterflies. 
He had developed no negative responses to any of these animals except the 
dog. Once a dog had attacked him and thereafter he was partly conditioned 
to dogs, but this fear had not been transferred to other animals or to woolly 
toys or mechanical animals. In everyday life he began to play with 
every animal (other than the dog) as soon as it came within his ken. 
Much to the distress of his mother, he would often bring to her worms and 
caterpillars of every description. Even to the hoptoad he showed not the 
slightest negative response. 


In going to the Bronx Zoological Park, we had to take a ferry which 
was his first experience on a large boat. Before this trip he had been in a 
canoe with me several times. The first time I took him out in the canoe, 
it was a little rough and the canoe was a tippy one. I got him out about 
300 yards. A small wave struck us and he stiffened up a bit and said, 
“Daddy, too much water.” I then took him closer in and paddled around 
the shore line for awhile. All fear responses to the canoe disappeared 
although even now he sits pretty close and pretty tight when out in it. 
Shortly after his first trip in the canoe, he took the trip in question to the 
Zoological Park. On the ferry almost the same type of behavior devel- 


120 BEHAVIORISM 


oped. We got about half way over. He was leaning down and looking at 
the passage of the water. Suddenly he looked up and said, “Mama, too 
much water; Billy not afraid.” But his general behavior belied his words 
somewhat. 


In the Zoological Park he showed a tremendous eagerness to go after 
every animal he saw and we took him religiously to every cage, pen and 
yard. The animals that brought out his greatest reluctance to leave were 
a pair of chimpanzees. They were having a gorgeous time. They were 
carrying armfuls of hay up the chains of the swing. After getting to the 
seat they tried to slip the hay underneath them. Then suddenly they would 
swing down and catch each others hands, drop and hit the floor with a bang. 


The animals calling out the most excited verbal response were the 
elephants; and next came the gaudily colored tropical birds. Every reac- 
tion to every animal was positive. 


The behavior of the 7-months old baby was that of resigned boredom 
throughout the whole afternoon. Not once was any response shown either 
positive or negative. Now and then set fixation of the eyes was noticed. 
The birds seemed to bring out the most prolonged fixation. 


We think that we have carried these experiments far enough on in- 
fants, the genesis of whose emotional behavior we know, to uphold our 
main contention that when fear responses occur in the presence of all ob- 
jects and situations such as we have described they are always conditioned. 


Are we to conclude from this work that in infants there are no un- 
learned reactions of a kind that might give us a starting point for building 
up emotional behavior ? 


Evidence for Three Types of Unlearned Beginnings 
of Emotional Reactions 


I feel reasonably sure that there are three different forms of emotional 
response that can be called out at birth by three sets of stimuli. Don’t 
misunderstand me if I call these responses “fear,” “rage” and “love.” Let 
me hasten to assure you that while I use the words fear, rage and love, I 
want you to strip them of all their old connotations. Please look upon the 
reactions we designate by them just as you look upon breathing, heart beat, 
grasping and other unlearned responses studied in the last chapter. 


EMOTIONS 121 


The facts follow. 


Fear: You will recall that in my first lecture I talked to you about 
the panicky state into which the primitive individual fell when limbs of trees 
broke and crashed around him, and when thunder and other loud sounds 
occurred in his presence. This is more than a mere hypothesis. Our work 
upon infants, especially those without cerebral hemispheres where the 
reaction is more pronounced, early taught us that loud sounds almost 
invariably produced a marked reaction in infants from the very moment 
of birth. For example, the striking of a steel bar with a hammer will call 
out a jump, a start, a respiratory pause followed by more rapid breathing 
with marked vasomotor changes, sudden closure of the eye, clutching of 
hands, puckering of lips. Then occur, depending upon the age of the infant, 
crying, falling down, crawling, walking or running away. I have never 
made a very systematic study of the range of sound stimuli that will call 
out fear responses. Not every type of sound will do it. Some extremely 
low pitched, rumbling noises will not call them out, nor will the very high 
tones of the Galton whistle. In the half sleeping infant of 2 or 3 days of 
age I have called them out repeatedly by suddenly crinkling a half of a 
newspaper near its ear, and by making a loud, shrill, hissing sound with 
the lips. Pure tones, such as those obtained from the tuning fork at any 
rate, are not very effective in calling them out. Considerably more work 
must be done upon the nature of the auditory stimulus as well as upon the 
separate part reactions in the response before the whole stimulus-response 
picture is complete.’ | 


The passage I read from Darwin at the beginning of the lecture is a 
very good picture of adult fear behavior, although many, many conditioned 
responses are present. In his description we see organized fear behavior 
on a large scale, learned as well as unlearned elements appearing. 


The other stimulus calling out this same fear reaction is loss of sup- 
port—especially when the body is not set to compensate for it. It can best 
be observed in newborns just when they are falling asleep. If dropped 
then, or if the blanket upon which they lie is suddenly jerked, pulling the 
infant along with it, the response invariably occurs. 


In infants only a few hours old this fear reaction is quickly ‘fatigued.’ 
In other words, if the same sound or the same kind of loss of support 


1 I have found only one child out of many hundreds worked with in whom a fear response 
could not be called out by loud sounds. She is well developed, well nourished, and normal in 
every way. There were no fear reactions to any other stimuli. The nearest approach to 
fear I saw was at the sight and sound of am opening and closing umbrella. I have no ex- 
slanation to offer for this exception. 


122 BEHAVIORISM 


stimulus is frequently applied, you can often call out the reaction only once. 
After a few moments’ rest those same stimuli are again effective. 


Even in the case of the adult human and higher mammals, loss of 
support when the individual is not set for it calls out a strong fear reaction. 
If we have to walk across a slender plank, naturally as we approach it the 
muscles of the body are all set for it, but if we cross a bridge which 
remains perfectly steady until the middle has been reached and then sud- 
denly begins to give way, our response is very marked. When this happens 
in the case of a horse one can with difficulty get him, to cross a bridge 
again. There are many horses in the country bridge shy. I am sure the 
same principle is operative when a child is rapidly led out into deep water 
for the first time. The buoyancy of the water actually throws him off his 
balance. Even when the water is warm there is a catching of the breath, 
clutching with the hands and crying. 


Rage: Have you ever had the never to be forgotten experience when 
proudly walking across a crowded street holding your two-year-old daugh- 
ter’s hand, of having her suddenly pull you in some other direction? And 
when you quickly and sharply jerked her back and exerted steady pressure 
on her arm to keep her straight did she then suddenly stiffen, begin to 
scream at the top of her voice and lie down stiff as a ramrod in the middle 
of the street, yelling with wide open mouth until she became blue in the 
face, and continuing to yell until she could make no further sound? If 
you have not, any picture of rage behavior must appear lifeless to you. 

Possibly you have seen the large village bully take some child, down 
him and hold his arms and legs so closely to his body that the child could 
not even struggle. Have you watched the youngster stiffen and yell until 
he became blue in the face? 


Did you ever notice the sudden changes that come into the faces of 
men when they are jostled and suddenly and unduly crowded in the street 
cars and railway trains? Hampering of bodily movement brings out the 
series of responses we call rage. This can be observed from the moment 
of birth but more easily in infants 10 to 15 days of age. When the head 
is held lightly between the hands; when the arms are pressed to the sides; 
and when the legs are held tightly together, rage behavior begins. The 
unlearned response elements in rage behavior have never been completely 
catalogued. Some of the elements, however, are easily observed, such as 
the stiffening of the whole body, the free slashing movements of hands, 
arms and legs, and the holding of the breath. There is no crying at first, 
then the mouth is opened to the fullest extent and the breath is held until 


EMOTIONS 123 


the face appears blue. These states can be brought on without the pressure 
in any case being severe enough to produce the slightest injury to the 
child. The experiments are discontinued the moment the slightest blue- 
ness appears in the skin. All children can be thrown into such a state and 
the reactions will continue until the irritating situation is relieved and 
sometimes for a considerable period thereafter. We have had this state 
brought out when the arms were held upward by a cord to which was 
attached a lead ball not exceeding an ounce in weight. The constant ham- 
pering of the arms produced by even this slight weight is sufficient to bring 
out the response. When the child is lying on its back the response can 
occasionally be brought out by pressing on each side of the head with 
cotton wool. In many cases this state can be observed quite easily when 
the mother or nurse has to dress the child somewhat roughly or hurriedly. 


Love: The study of this emotion in the infant is beset with a great 
many difficulties on the conventional side. Our observations consequently 
have been incidental rather than directly experimental. The stimulus to 
love responses apparently is stroking of the skin, tickling, gentle rocking, 
patting. The responses are especially easy to bring out by the stimulation 
of what, for lack of a better term, we may call the erogenous zones, such 
as the nipples, the lips and the sex organs. The response in an infant 
depends upon its state; when crying the crying will cease and a smile 
begin. Gurgling and cooing appear. Violent movements of arms and 
trunk with pronounced laughter occur in even 6-8 months old infants when 
tickled. It is thus seen that we use the term “love” in a much broader 
sense than it is popularly used. The responses we intend to mark off here 
are those popularly called “affectionate,” “good natured,” “kindly,” etc. 
The term ‘‘love” embraces all of these as well as the responses we see in 
adults between the sexes. They all have a common origin. 


Are There Other Unlearned Responses than These Three General Types? 


Whether these three types of response are all that have an hereditary 
background we are not sure. Whether or not there are other stimuli 
which will call out these responses we must also leave in doubt.t If our 
observations are in any way complete, it would seem that emotional reac- 
tions are quite simple in the infant and the stimuli which call them out 
quite few in number. 


These reactions which we have agreed, then, to call fear, rage and 
love, are at first quite indefinite. Much work remains to be done to see 
1 For example, I am uncertain what the relationship is between the fear reactions we have been 


pence sate and the reactions called out by very hot objects, ice cold water, and other noxious 
stimuli. 


124 BEHAVIORISM 


what the various part reactions are in each and how much they differ. 
They are certainly not the complicated kinds of emotional reactions we see 
later on in life but at least I believe they form the nucleus out of which 
ali future emotional reactions arise. So quickly do they become condi- 
tioned as we shall show later, that it gives a wrong impression to call them 
hereditary modes of response. It is probably better just to keep to the 
actual facts of observation thus: 


(Ordinarily called Fear :) 


D3) ics Cea a nites ot en nn sre eer ee (U)R 
Loud sounds Checking of breathing, “jump” or 
Loss of support start of whole body, crying, often 


defaecation and urination (and 
many others not worked out experi- 
mentally. Probably the largest 
group of part reactions are viscer- 


al). 
(Ordinarily called Rage:) 
(GUTS eee tte be LONRe ten Sree ree ae (U)R 
Restraint of bodily movement Stiffening of whole body, scream- 


ing, temporary cessation of breath- 
ing, reddening of face changing to 
blueness of face, etc. It is obvious 
that while there are general overt 
responses, the greatest concentra- 
tion of movement is in the visceral 
field. Blood tests of infants so man- 
handled show that there is an in- 
crease in blood sugar. This means 
probably an increase in the secre- 
tion of the adrenal glands. 
(Ordinarily called Love :) 


CLT )) SS OU SN oa Me peecrteems peer toe seen ahh (U)R 
Stroking skin and sex organs, rock- Cessation of crying; gurgling, 
ing, riding on foot, etc. cooing and many others not deter- 


mined. ‘That visceral factors pre- 
dominate is shown by changes in 
circulation and in respiration, erec- 
tion of penis, etc. 


EMOTIONS A veh 


If we think of these unlearned (so-called emotional) responses in the 
terms of these simple formulae, we cannot go very far wrong. 


How Our Emotional Life Becomes Complicated 


How can we square these observations with those which show the 
enormous complexity in the emotional life of the adult? We know that 
hundreds of children are afraid of the dark, we know that many women 
are afraid of snakes, mice and insects, and that emotions are attached to 
many ordinary objects of almost daily use. Fears become attached to 
persons and to places and to general situations, such as the woods, the 
water, etc. In the same way the number of objects and situations which 
can call out rage and love become enormously increased. Rage and love 
at first are not produced by the mere sight of an object. We know that 
later on in life the mere sight of persons may call out both of these primi- 
tive emotions. How do such “attachments” grow up? How can objects 
which at first do not call out emotions come later to call them out and thus 
greatly increase the richness as well as the dangers of our emotional life? 


Since 1918 we have been at work upon this problem. We were rather 
loath at first to conduct such experiments, but the need of this kind of 
study was so great that we finally decided to experiment upon the pos- 
sibility of building up fears in the infant and then later to study practical 
methods for removing them. We chose as our first subject Albert B, an 
infant weighing twenty-one pounds, at eleven months of age. Albert was 
the son of one of the wet nurses in the Harriet Lane Hospital. He had 
lived his whole life in the hospital. He was a wonderfully “good” baby. 
In all the months we worked with him we never saw him cry until after 
our experiments were made! 


Before turning to the experiments by means of which we built up 
emotional responses in the laboratory, it is necessary for you to recall all 
that I tried to tell you on the conditioning of reflexes. I am going to 
assume that you know that when you establish a conditioned reaction, you 
must have a fundamental stimulus to start with which will call out the 
response in question. Your next step is to get some other stimulus to 
call it out. For example, if your purpose is to make the arm and hand 
jerk away every time a buzzer sounds, you must use the electric shock 
or other noxious stimulus each time the electric buzzer is sounded. 
Shortly, as you know, the arm will begin to jump away when the buzzer 
is sounded just as it jumps away when the electric shock is given. We 
already know now that there is an unconditioned or fundamental stimulus 


126 BEHAVIORISM 


which will call out the fear reaction quickly and easily. It is a loud sound. 
We determined to use this just as we used the electric shock in the experi- 
ments I told you about in Lecture 2. 


Our first experiment with Albert had for its object the conditioning 
of a fear response to a white rat. We first showed by repeated tests that 
nothing but loud sounds and removal of support would bring out fear 
response in this child. Everything coming within twelve inches of him 
was reached for and manipulated. His reaction, however, to a loud sound 
was characteristic of what occurs with most children. A steel bar about 
one inch in diameter and three feet long, when struck with a carpenter’s 
hammer produced the most marked kind of reaction. 


Our laboratory notes+ showing the progress in establishing a con- 
ditioned emotional response are given here in full: 


Eleven months, 3 days old. (1) White rat which he had played with for 
weeks was suddenly taken from the basket (the usual routine) and presented to 
Albert. He began to reach for rat with left hand. Just as his hand touched the 
animal the bar was struck immediately behind his head. The infant jumped 
violently and fell forward, burying his face in the mattress. He did not cry, how- 
ever. 


(2) Just as his right hand touched the rat the bar was again struck. Again 
the infant jumped violently, fell forward and began to whimper. 


On account of his disturbed condition no further tests were made 
for one week. 


Eleven months, ten days old. (1) Rat presented suddenly without sound. 
There was steady fixation but no tendency at first to reach for it. The rat was then 
placed nearer, whereupon tentative reaching movements began with the right hand. 
When the rat nosed the infant’s left hand the hand was immediately withdrawn. He 
started to reach for the head of the animal with the forefinger of his left hand 
but withdrew it suddenly before contact. It is thus seen that the two joint stimula- 
tions given last week were not without effect. He was tested with his blocks imme- 
diately afterwards to see if they shared in the process of conditioning. He began 
immediately to pick them up, dropping them and pounding them, etc. In the re- 
mainder of the tests the blocks were given frequently to quiet him and to test his 
peneral emotional state. They were always removed from sight when the process 
of conditioning was under way. 


(2) Combined stimulation with rat and sound. Started, then fell over im- 
mediately to right side. No crying. 


(3) Combined stimulation. Fell to right side and rested on hands with head 
turned from rat. No crying. 


(4) Combined stimulation. Same reaction. 


1 See the original paper by Rosalie Rayner and John B. Watson, Scientific Monthly, 1921, p. 493. 


EMOTIONS 127 


(5) Rat suddenly presented alone. Puckered face, whimpered and withdrew 
body sharply to left. 


(6) Combined stimulation. Fell over immediately to right side and began 
to whimper. 


(7) Combined stimulation. Started violently and cried, but did not fall 
over. 


(8) Rat alone. The instant the rat was shown the baby began to cry. 
Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over, raised himself on all fours 
and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty befere he 
reached the edge of the mattress. 


Surely this proof of the conditioned origin of a fear response puts 
us on natural science grounds in our study of emotional behavior. It is 
a far more prolific goose for laying golden eggs than is James’ barren 
verbal formulation. It yields an explanatory principle that will account 
for the enormous complexity in the emotional behavior of adults. We no 
longer in accounting for such behavior have to fall back upon heredity, 


The Spread or Transfer of Conditioned Emotional Responses 


Before the above experiment on the rat was made Albert had been 
playing for weeks with rabbits, pigeons, fur muffs, the hair of the attend- 
ants, and false faces. What effect will conditioning him upon the rat have 
upon his response to these animals and other objects when next he sees 
them? To test this we made no further experiments upon him for five 
days. That is, during this five day period he was not allowed to see any 
of the above objects. At the end of the 6th day we again tested him first 
with the rat to see if the conditioned fear response to it had carried over. 
Our notes are as follows: 


Eleven months, fifteen days old. 


(1) Tested first with blocks. He reached readily for them, playing with 
them as usual. This shows that there has been no general transfer to the room, 
table, blocks, etc. 


(2) Rat alone. Whimpered immediately, withdrew right hand and turned 
head and trunk away. 


(3) Blocks again offered. Played readily with them, smiling and gurgling. 


(4) Rat alone. Leaned over to the left side as far away from the rat as 
possible, then fell over, getting up on all fours and scurrying away as rapidly as 
possible. . 


(5) Blocks again offered. Reached immediately for them, smiling and 
laughing as before. 


128 BEHAVIORISM 


This shows that the conditioned response was carried over the five 
day period. Next we presented in order a rabbit, a dog, a sealskin coat, 
cotton wool, human hair and a false face: 


(6) Rabbit alone. A rabbit was suddenly placed on the mattress in front 
of him. The reaction was pronounced. Negative responses began at once. He 
leaned as far away from the animal as possible, whimpered, then burst into tears. 
When the rabbit was placed in contact with him he buried his face in the mattress, 
then got up on all fours and crawled away, crying as he went. This was a most 
convincing test. 


(7) The blocks were next given him, after an interval. He played with 
them as before. It was observed by four people that he played far more energeti- 
cally with them than ever before. The blocks were raised high over his head and 
slammed down with a great deal of force. 


(8) Dog alone. The dog did not produce as violent a reaction as the rabbit. 
The moment fixation of the eyes occurred the child shrank back and as the animal 
came nearer he attempted to get on all fours but did not cry at first. As soon as 
the dog passed out of his range of vision he became quiet. The dog was then made 
to approach the infant’s head (he was lying down at the moment). Albert straight- 
ened up immediately, fell over to the opposite side and turned his head away. He 
then began to cry. 


(9) Blocks were again presented. He began immediately to play with them. 


(10) Fur coat (seal). Withdrew immediately to the left side and began 
to fret. Coat put close to him on the left side, he turned immediately, began to cry 
and tried to crawl away on all fours. 


(11) Cotton wool. The wool was presented in a paper package. At the 
ends the cotton was not covered by the paper. It was placed first on his feet. He 
kicked it away but did not touch it with his hands. When his hand was laid on the 
wool he immediately withdrew it but did not show the shock that the animals or 
fur coat produced in him. He then began to play with the paper, avoiding contact 
with the wool itself. Before the hour was up, however, he lost some of his 
negativism to the wool. 


(12) Just in play W. who had made the experiments, put his head down to 
see if Albert would play with his hair. Albert was completely negative. The 
two other observers did the same thing. He began immediately to play with their 
hair. A Santa Claus mask was then brought and presented to Albert. He was 
again pronouncedly negative, although on all previous occasions he had played 
with it. 

Our notes thus give a convincing proof of spread or transfer. 


We have here further proof in these transfers that conditioned emo- 
tional responses are exactly like other conditioned responses. Please 
recall what I told you in Lecture 2 (p. 28) about differential responses. 
I showed there that if you condition an animal, say, to a tone A of a 
given pitch almost any other tone will at first call out the response. I 


EMOTIONS 129 


showed you there, too, that by continuing the experiment—say by always 
feeding when tone A is sounded but never when any other tone is sound- 
ed—you soon get the animal to the point where it will respond only to A. 


I am sure that in these cases of transfer or spread of conditioned 
emotional responses the same factors are at work. 


I believe, although I have never tried the experiments, that we could 
set up just as sharp a differential reaction in the emotional field as we can 
in any other. JI mean by this merely that if the experiment were long con- 
tinued we could bring the fear reaction out sharply whenever the rat was 
shown but never when any other furry object was shown. If this were 
the case, we should have a differential conditioned emotional response. 
This seems to be what happens in real life. Most of us in infancy and in 
early youth are in the undifferentiated emotional state. Many adults, es- 
pecially women, remain in it. All primitive peoples remain in it (super- 
stitions, etc.). But educated adults by the long training they get in man- 
ipulating objects, handling animals, working with electricity, etc., reach 
the second or differentiated stage of the conditioned emotional reaction. 


There is thus, if my reasoning is correct, a thoroughly sound way of 
accounting for transferred emotional responses—and for the Freudian’s 
so-called “free-floating affects.” When conditioned emotional responses 
are first set up, a wide range of stimuli (in this case all hairy objects) 
physically similar will at first call out a response and so far as we know 
will continue to call it out unless experimental steps (or a very fortunate 
series of environmental settings) are taken to bring the undifferentiated 
conditioned response up to the differentiated stage. In the differentiated 
stage, only the object or situation you were conditioned upon originally will 
call out the response. 


Summary 


We must see that there is just as little evidence for a wholesale in- 
heritance of those complicated patterns of response commonly called 
emotional as there is for the inheritance of those called instinctive. 


Possibly a better way to describe our findings is to say that in work- 
ing over the whole field of the human infant’s reaction to stimuli, we find 
that certain types of stimuli—loud sounds and removal of support—pro- 
duce a certain general type of response, namely, momentary checking of 
breath, a start of the whole body, crying, marked visceral responses, etc. ; 
that another type of stimulus—holding or restraint—produces crying with 


130 BEHAVIORISM 


wide open mouth, prolonged holding of breath, marked changes in circula- 
tion and other visceral changes; that a third stimulus—stroking the skin, 
especially in sex sensitive areas—produces smiling, changes in respiration, 
cessation of crying, cooing, gurgling, erection and other visceral changes. 
Attention is called to the fact that responses to these stimuli are not 
mutually exclusive—many of the part reactions are the same. 


These unconditioned stimuli with their relatively simple unconditioned 
responses are our starting points in building up those complicated con- 
ditioned habit patterns we later call our emotions. In other words, 
emotional reactions are built in and to order like most of our other reac- 
tion patterns. Not only do we get an increase in the number of stimuli 
calling out the response (substitution) through direct conditioning and 
through transfers (thus enormously widening the stimulus range) but 
also we get marked additions to the responses and other modifications of 
them. 


Another set of factors increasing the complexity of our emotional 
life must be taken into account. The same object (for example a person) 
can become a substitute stimulus for a fear response in one situation and 
a little later a substitute stimulus for a love response in another, or even 
for a rage response. The increasing complexity brought about by these 
factors soon gives us an emotional organization sufficiently complicated 
to satisfy even the novelist and the poet. 


I am loath to close this lecture until I have introduced, parenthetically 
at least, a thought which I shall take up later in describing some of the 
human being’s more complicated types of reaction (Lecture 11). The 
thought is that notwithstanding the fact that in all emotional responses 
there are overt factors such as the movement of the eyes and the arms 
and the legs and the trunk, visceral and glandular factors predominate. 
The ‘cold sweat’ of fear, the “bursting heart,’ the ‘bowed head’ in apathy 
and grief, the ‘exuberance of youth,’ the ‘palpitating heart’ of the swain 
or maiden, are more than mere literary expressions; they are bits of 
genuine observation. 


I want to develop the thesis for you later on that society has never 
been able to get hold of these implicit concealed visceral and glandular 
reactions of ours, or else it would have schooled them in us, for, as you 
know, society has a great propensity for regulating all of our reactions. 
Hence most of our adult overt reactions—our speech, the movements of 
our arms, legs and trunk—are schooled and habitized. Owing to their 
concealed nature, however, society cannot get hold of visceral behavior to 


EMOTIONS 131 


lay down rules and regulations for its integration. It follows as a corollary 
from this that we have no names, no words with which to describe these 
reactions. They remain unverbalized. One can describe in well chosen 
words every act of two boxers, two fencers, and can criticize each in- 
dividual detail of their responses, because there are verbal manuals of 
procedure and practice in the performance of these skillful acts. But 
what Hoyle has laid down the rules by which the separate movements of 
our viscera and glands must take place when in the presence of an emo- 
tionally exciting object. 


Because, then, of the fact that we have never verbalized these re- 
sponses, a good many things happen to us that we cannot talk about. We 
have never learned how to talk about them. There are no words for them, 
The theory of the unverbalized in human behavior gives us a natural 
science way of explaining many things the Freudians now call “‘uncon- 
scious complexes,” “suppressed wishes” and the like. In other words, we 
can now come back to natural science in our study of emotional behavior. 
Our emotional life grows and develops like our other sets of habits. But 
do our emotional habits once implanted suffer from disuse? Can they be 
put away and outgrown like our manual and verbal habits? Until very 
recently we had no facts to guide us in answering these questions. Some 
are now available. In my next lecture I shall attempt to present them. 


VIII 


EMOTIONS 


What Emotions Are We Born With— 
How Do We Acquire New Ones— 
How Do We Lose Our Old Ones? 


Part II—Further Experiments and Observations on How 
We Acquire, Shift and Lose Our Emotional Life 


Introduction :—The experiments I discussed in my last lecture were 
completed in 1920. Until the fall of 1923 no further experiments were 
undertaken. Finding that emotional responses could be built in with great 
readiness, we were all the more eager to see whether they could be broken 
down, and if so by what methods. No further tests could be made upon 
Albert B., the youngster in whom the conditioned responses had been built 
up, because he was shortly afterwards adopted by an out-of-town family. 
It was just at this time that my work at Johns Hopkins was interrupted. 


The matter of further experimentation rested until the fall of 1923. 
At that time a sum of money was granted by the Laura Spelman Rocke- 
feller Memorial to the Institute of Educational Research of Teachers’ 
College, a part of which was used for continuing the study of the emotional 
life of children. We found a place for work—the Heckscher Foundation. 
Approximately 70 children are kept there ranging in age from 3 months 
to 7 years. It was not an ideal place for our experimental work because 
we were not allowed full control of the children and because of the fre- 
quency with which work had to be stopped on account of unavoidable epi- 
demics of one kind or another. In spite of these handicaps much work 
was done. While I spent considerable time there as consultant and helped 
to plan the work, Mrs. Mary Cover Jones conducted all of the experiments 
and wrote up all of the results,? 


In this lecture I wish to give you an account of this work. 


1 Partial report on this work has already appeared. See The Elimination of Children’s Fears, by 
Mary Cover Jones, Jr.. Exp. Psychology, 1924, p.382. 


132 


EMOTIONS 133 


The Different Methods Used in Attempting to 
Eliminate Fear Responses 


Locating the Conditioned Fear Responses in Children:—A number 
of children of different ages were put through a group of situations de- 
signed to bring out fear responses if any were present. As has already 
been mentioned, children brought up in the home show fear reactions. 
These we have every reason to believe are conditioned. By passing each 
individual through these situations we were able not only to locate the 
children possessing the most pronounced conditioned fear reactions but also 
to locate the objects (and the general situations) that called out those 
reactions. 


We worked here of course under one disadvantage. We did not know 
the genetic history of their fear responses. Hence we did not know 
whether a given fear reaction when observed was directly conditioned or 
merely transferred. This is always a handicap—an especially hard one in 
this work as I shall show you later, 


Elimination of Fear Responses Through Disuse :—Having located a 
child with a fear response and the stimulus calling it out, our next step 
was to attempt to remove it. 


It has commonly been supposed that the mere removal of the stimulus 
for a sufficient length of time will cause the child or adult to “forget his 
fear.” All of us have heard the expressions “Just keep him away from it 
and he’ll outgrow it. He will forget all about it.” Laboratory tests were 
made to determine the efficacy of this method. I quote from Mrs. Jones’ 
laboratory notes: 


Case 1—Rose D. Age 21 months. General situation: sitting in play-pen 
with other children none of whom showed specific fears. A rabbit was introduced 
from behind a screen. 


Jan. 19. At sight of the rabbit, Rose burst into tears, her crying lessened 
when the experimenter picked up the rabbit, but again increased when the rabbit 
was put back on the floor. At the removal of the rabbit she quieted down, accepted 
a cracker, and presently returned to her blocks. 


Feb. 5. After 2 weeks the situation was repeated. She cried and trembled 
upon seeing the rabbit. E. (the experimenter) sat on the floor between Rose and 
the rabbit; she continued to cry for several minutes. E. tried to divert her atten- 
tion with the peg-board; she finally stopped crying, but continued to watch the 
rabbit and would not attempt to play. 


Case &.—-Bobby G. Age 30 months. 


134 BEHAVIORISM 


Dec. 6. Bobby showed a slight fear response when a rat was presented in 
a box. He looked at it from a distance of several feet, drew back and cried. A 
3-day period of training followed bringing Bobby to the point where he tolerated 
a rat in the pen in which he was playing, and even touched it without overt fear 
indications. No further stimulation with the rat occurred until 


Jan. 30. After nearly two months of no experience with the specific stimulus, 
Bobby was again brought into the laboratory. While he was playing in the pen, 
E. appeared, with a rat held in her hand. Bobby jumped up, ran outside the pen, 
and cried. The rat having been returned to its box, Bobby ran to E., held her 
hand, and showed marked disturbance. 


Case 33.—Eleanor J. Age 21 months. 


Jan. 17. While playing in the pen, a frog was introduced from behind her. 
She watched, came nearer, and finally touched it. The frog jumped. She with- 
drew and when later presented with the frog, shook her head and pushed the 
experimenter’s hand away violently. 


Mar. 26. After two months of no further experience with animals, Eleanor, 
was taken to the laboratory and offered the frog. When the frog hopped she drew 
back, ran from the pen and cried. 


These tests and many others similar in character incline us to believe 
that the method of disuse in the case of emotional disturbance is not as 
effective as is commonly supposed. It is admitted, however, that the tests 
were not extended over long enough time to yield complete evidence. 


Method of Verbal Organization 


Most of the subjects in the Heckscher Foundation were under 4 years 
of age and the possibility of verbally organizing the children about the 
objects that called out fear responses was very limited. Naturally nothing 
can be accomplished by the use of this method until the child has a fairly 
wide language organization. However, one satisfactory subject—Jean E., 
a girl in her 5th year, was found sufficiently well organized to be used in an 
extended test. At the initial presentation of the rabbit, marked fear 
responses were shown. The rabbit was not shown again for some time, 
but ten minutes daily conversation was given her on the subject of rabbits. 
The experimenter introduced such devices as the picture book of Peter 
Rabbit, toy rabbits and rabbits modeled from plasticine. Brief stories 
about rabbits were told. During the telling of these stories, she would say 
“Where is your rabbit?” or “Show me a rabbit”; and once she said “I 
touched your rabbit and stroked it and never cried” (which was not true). 
At the end of one week of verbal organization, the rabbit was shown 
again. Her reaction was practically the same as at the first encounter. 
She jumped up from her play and retreated. When coaxed she touched 


EMOTIONS 135 


the rabbit while the experimenter held it, but when the animal was put 
down on the floor she sobbed “Put it away—take it.” Verbal organization 
when not connected with actual manual or visceral adjustments to the 
animal had little effect in removing her fear responses. 


Method of Frequent Application of Stimulus 


While experiments with this method have not been extended, the 
results have not been very hopeful. The routine adopted in applying this 
method is to have the animal calling out the fear reaction brought in many 
times each day. While in some cases no actual negative responses were 
made, this was the only form of improvement noted—no positive reactions 
developed from the use of this method. In some cases a summation effect 
rather than an adjustment was obtained. 


Method of Introducing Social Factors 


Most of us are familiar both in the school and on the playground with 
what happens among groups of children. If one shows fear of any object 
of which the group does not show fear, the one showing fear is made a 
scapegoat and is called a “’fraidy cat.” We attempted to use this social 
factor in the case of some of the children. One case is given here in detail: 


Case 41—Arthur G. Age 4 years. 


Arthur was shown the frogs in an aquarium, no other children being present. 
He cried, said “they bite,” and ran out of the play-pen. Later, however, he was 
brought into the room with four other boys; he swaggered up to the aquarium, 
pressing ahead of the others who were with him. When one of his companions 
picked up a frog and turned to him with it, he screamed and fled; at this he was 
chased and made fun of, but with naturally no lessening of the fear on this 
particular occasion. 


This is probably one of the most unsafe methods in common use for 
eliminating fears. It tends to breed negative reactions not only to the 
animal feared but to society as a whole. 


Where milder social methods are used, ordinarily called social imita- 
tion, better results are obtained. Mrs. Jones gives two cases which I quote: 


Case 8.—Bobby G. Age 30 months. 


Bobby was playing in the pen with Mary and Laurel. The rabbit was intro- 
duced in a basket. Bobby cried “No, no,” and motioned for the experimenter te 
remove it. The two girls, however, ran up readily enough, looked in at the rabbit 
and talked excitedly. Bobby became promptly interested, said “What? Me see,” 


136 BEHAVIORISM 


and ran forward, his curiosity and assertiveness in the social situation overmaster- 
ing other impulses. 


Case 54.—Vincent W. Age 21 months. 


Jan. 19. Vincent showed no fear of the rabbit, even when it was pushed 
against his hands or face. His only response was to laugh and reach for the 
rabbit’s fur. On the same day he was taken into the pen with Rosey, who cried 
at the sight of the rabbit. Vincent immediately developed a fear response; in the 
ordinary playroom situation he would pay no attention to her crying, but in connec- 
tion with the rabbit, her distress had a marked suggestion value. The fear trans- 
ferred in this way persisted for over two weeks. 


Feb. 6. Eli and Herbert were in the play-pen with the rabbit. When Vincent 
was brought in, he remained cautiously standing at some distance. Eli led Vincent 
over to the rabbit, and induced him to touch the animal. Vincent laughed. 


As will be noted, however, there are difficulties in the way of the use 
of this method. Occasionally the children showing no fear to the object 
become conditioned by the behavior of the child showing fear reactions to 
the object. 


While all of these methods are suggestive and while none of them has 
been worked out to a final conclusion, none seems especially fruitful or 
free from danger. 


The Method of Re-Conditioning or Un-Conditioning 


The most successful method so far discovered for use in removing 
fears is the method of unconditioning or reconditioning. Reconditioning 
would be a little more satisfactory word to use except for the fact that it 
has been used by the physical culturists in various types of health propa- 
ganda. Unconditioning seems the only other available word. 


I wish to go into the details of one case where unconditioning was 
attempted because it illustrates not only the method used but the various 
difficulties one is likely to encounter in such work. 


Peter was an active eager child approximately 3 years of age.1 This 
child was well adjusted to ordinary life situations except for his fear or- 
ganization. He was afraid of white rats, rabbits, fur coats, feathers, cotton 
wool, frogs, fish and mechanical toys. From the description of his fears, 
you might well think that Peter was merely Albert B. of the last lecture 
grown up. Only you must remember that Peter’s fears were “home 
grown,” not experimentally produced as were Albert’s, -Peter’s fears, 


1 A full report on Peter is given by Mrs. Jones in the December, 1924 number of the Peda- 
gogical Seminary. 


EMOTIONS 137 


Hae were much more pronounced, as the following description will 
show: 


Peter was put in a crib in a play room and immediately became ab- 
sorbed in his toys. A white rat was introduced into the crib from behind. 
(The experimenter was behind a screen.) At sight of the rat, Peter 
screamed and fell flat on his back in a paroxysm of fear. The stimulus 
was removed, and Peter was taken out of the crib and put into a chair. 
Barbara, a girl of two, was brought to the crib and the white rat introduced 
as before. She exhibited no fear but picked the rat up in her hand. Peter 
sat quietly watching Barbara and the rat. A string of beads belonging to 
Peter had been left in the crib. Whenever the rat touched a part of the 
string, he would say “my beads” in a complaining voice, although he made 
no objections when Barbara touched them. Invited to get down from the 
chair, he shook his head, fear not yet subsided. Twenty-five minutes 
elapsed before he was ready to play about freely. 


The next day his reactions to the following situations and objects were 
noted : 


Blayaroom) and. crib. Took his toys, got into crib without protest. 
White ball rolled inn... nnn Picked it up and held it. 

ATU eli tillige OVEN CLI Use tetera: Cried until it was removed. 

Bunecoat mune Over: Crib ee Cried until it was removed. 

ROT oe ree eee ene -Whimpered, withdrew, cried. 
Piagewitheteatners cae .Cried. 

White toy rabbit of rough cloth........Neither negative nor positive reaction. 

NV GOUCTS COL ec eterno ene, Neither negative nor positive reaction. 


Training for removal of these fears in Peter was first begun util- 
izing social factors as discussed on p. 135. There was considerable improve- 
ment, but before retraining was completed the child fell ill with scarlet 
fever and had to go to a hospital for a period of two months. When com- 
ing back from the hospital a large barking dog attacked him and the nurse 
just as they entered a taxicab. Both the nurse and Peter were terribly 
frightened. Peter lay back in the taxi ill and exhausted. After allowing 
a few days for recovery he was taken to the laboratory and again tested 
with animals. His fear reactions to all the animals had returned in exag- 
gerated form. We determined then to use another type of procedure— 
that of direct unconditioning. We did not have control over his meals, 
but we secured permission to give him his mid-afternoon lunch consisting 
of crackers and a glass of milk. We seated him at a small table in a high 
chair. The lunch was served in a room about 40 feet long. Just as he 
began to eat his lunch, the rabbit was displayed in a wire cage of wide 
mesh. We displayed it on the first day just far enough away not to disturb 


138 BEHAVIORISM 


his eating. This point was then marked. The next day the rabbit was 
brought closer and closer until disturbance was first barely noticed. This 
place was marked. The third and succeeding days the same routine was 
maintained. Finally the rabbit could be placed upon the table—then in 
Peter’s lap. Next tolerance changed to positive reaction. Finally he would 
eat with one hand and play with the rabbit with the other, a proof that 
his viscera were retrained along with his hands! 


After having broken down his fear reactions to the rabbit—the animal 
calling out fear responses of the most exaggerated kinds—we were next 
interested in seeing what his reactions would be to other furry animals 
and furry objects. Fear responses to cotton, the fur coat, and feathers 
were entirely gone. He looked at them and handled them and then turned 
to other things. He would even pick up the fur rug and bring it to the 
experimenter. 


The reaction to white rats was greatly improved—it had at least 
reached the tolerance stage but did not call out any very excited positive 
manipulation. He would pick up the small tin boxes containing rats and 
frogs and carry them around the room. 


He was then tested in an entirely new animal situation. A mouse 
which he had not hitherto seen was handed to him together with a tangled 
mass of earthworms. His reaction was at first partly negative but this gave 
way in a few minutes to positive response to the worms and undisturbed 
watching of the mouse. 


We suffered here as always in working with home grown fears by not 
knowing the primary situation upon which the child was conditioned 
(conditioned reflex of the Ist order). Possibly if we had had information 
upon this point and had unconditioned him on his primary fear, all of the 
‘transferred’ responses would have evaporated at once. Not until we have 
had more experience with building up a primary fear, noting the transfers 
and then unconditioning for the primary, will we be working upon sure 
ground in this interesting field. It is just possible that there may be certain 
reaction differences (intensity) between the primary conditioned response, 
(1st order), the secondarily conditioned responses (2nd and succeeding 
orders) and the various transferred responses. If this is true, then we 
might be able to tell, by presenting widely varying situations to children 
whose emotional history is unknown, just which one any given child was 
originally conditioned upon. 


The whole field of emotions, when thus experimentally approached, 


EMOTIONS 139 


is a very thrilling one and one which opens up real vistas of practical appli- 
cation in the home and in the school—even in everyday life. 


At any rate we have now seen grow up under our very eyes the ex- 
perimental genesis of a fear response and at least one case where the fear 
response was uprooted by a safe experimental method. If fear can be 
handled in this way, why not all other forms of emotional organization 
connected with rage (tantrums) and love? I believe firmly that they can 
be. In other words, emotional organization is subject to exactly the same 
laws as other habits, both as to origin, as we have already pointed out, and 
as to decline. 


The use of the method in the case we have sketched had a serious 
drawback, mainly because we did not have control over all the meals of the 
child. (By the way, never start an experiment upon a child or infant unless 
you have full control.) Probably if the child had been stroked, petted, and 
rocked (sexual stimulation, thus leading to retraining of viscera) just as 
the fear object was presented, unconditioning might have taken place much 
more rapidly. 


Incomplete and unsatisfactory as is this preliminary report upon the 
work of unconditioning, there are at present no further facts. We must 
leave the subject of conditioning and unconditioning of emotional reactions 
until we can work upon a larger number of infants and work with them 
under better conditions of control. 


Home Factors Leading to Emotional Conditioning of Children 


It is conceivable that some day we may be able to bring up the human 
young through infancy and childhood without their crying or showing fear 
reactions except when in the presence of the unconditioned stimuli (pain, 
noxious stimuli, loud sounds, etc.) calling out these responses. Since these 
unconditioned stimuli are rarely present, children ought practically never 
to cry. And yet look at them—morning, noon and night they are at it! 
An infant has an honest right to cry when it has colic, when its diaper pin 
is sticking into its tender flesh, and to whimper a bit when hungry, when 
it gets its head in between the slats of the bed, or falls down between the 
mattress and the side of the bed, or when the cat scratches it, or its bodily 
tissue is otherwise injured, or when loud sounds and loss of support assail 
it. But on no other occasion is the cry justifiable. This means that owing 
to our unsatisfactory training methods in the home, we spoil the emotional 
make-up of each child as rapidly as the twig can be bent. 


we 


140 BEHAVIORISM 


What Situations Make the Child Cry 


In line with this thought, Mrs. Jones followed around a group of nine 
children from the time they first waked up in the morning until they were 
fast asleep at night. Every cry was noted, every laugh observed. The 
duration of laughing and crying was noted and the time of day it occurred 
and, most carefully of all, the general situations calling out these reactions 
were recorded and the after effects crying and laughing had upon subse- 
quent behavior. Children in the group ranged from 16 months to 3 years 
of age. These children were tested in the Heckscher Foundation, but they 
were living there temporarily. They had been brought up in the home. 
One month after the first set of observations was made another set was 
undertaken. The results of these observations have never been published 
by Mrs, Jones, but she has given me the main facts which I now present. 


The situations calling out cries are listed in the order of the number of 
cries elicited, as follows: 


1. Having to sit on the toilet chair. 

2. Having property taken away. 

3. Having the face washed. 

4. Being left alone in a room. 

5. Having the adult leave the room. 

6. Working at something which won’t pan out. 

7. Failure to get adults and other children to play with them, or 

look at them and talk to them. 

8. Being dressed. 

9. Failure to get adults to pick them up. 

10. Being undressed. 

11. Being bathed. 

12. Having the nose wiped. 


These are only twelve of the most usual situations calling out such 
responses. More than 100 situations called out weeping or whining. 
Many of the responses to these situations can be looked upon as uncon- 
ditioned or conditioned rage responses, for example: (1) sitting on the 
toilet chair, (2) having property taken away, (3) having its face washed, 
(6) working at something which won’t pan out, (10) being undressed, 
(11) being bathed, (12) having the nose wiped. On the other hand, (5) 
having the adult leave the room, (7) failure to get adults to play with 
them, and (9) failure to get adults to pick them up—would seem to be- 
long more in the love conditioned responses approaching somewhat the 
grief situation where the object or person to whom the attachment is 


EMOTIONS 141 


formed is removed or else will not exhibit the customary responses (as 
where ‘love’ has grown cold). Mrs. Jones states that there were a number 
of cases, too, where fears of both the conditioned and the unconditioned 
type were responsible for a good deal of crying—for example, when the 
children were made to stand on the top of the slides, to slide down the 
slide, to stand on the tables. Possibly (4) and (5) of the above classifica- 
tion may have elements of the fear response in them. 


In making a study of this kind, it should be always borne in mind 
that crying may be due to organic factors, such as sleepiness, hunger, colic, 
and the like. Mrs. Jones found that the largest number of cries (probably) 
due to intraorganic causes occurred between 9 and 11 o’clock in the morn- 
ing. Asa result of this finding, the institution placed its rest hours before 
lunch instead of after lunch, with two rest periods for the very young 
children. This considerably lessened the amount of crying and disturbed 
behavior due to intraorganic factors, 


What Makes Children Laugh 


The situations which call out laughter and smiling were recorded im 
the same way. The common causes of laughter are, in order, as follows: 


Being played with (playfully dressed, tickled, etc.). 

Running, chasing, romping with other children. 

Playing with toys (a ball was particularly effective). 

Teasing other children. 

Watching other children at play. 

Making attempts which resulted in adjustment (e. g. getting parts 
of toys or apparatus to fit together or work). 

Making sounds, more or less musical, at the piano, with a mouth 
organ, singing, pounding, etc. 


ne AEN Td Ss pe einat he 


In all 85 situations were listed calling out laughter and smiling. 
Tickling, playful dressing, gentle bathing, romping with other children, 
teasing (but always where there was a chance at a ‘comeback’—probably 
a learned response sexually based since the comeback involved being gently 
handled, pummeled and tickled) were the most frequent situations eliciting 
laughter. It is hardly possible to attempt to discuss here to what extent 
these smiling reactions were unconditioned and to what extent conditioned. 
Attention is called to the fact that depending on the way the situations are 
manipulated and upon the intraorganic condition of the youngsters, the 
same stimuli can at one time bring out laughter and at another time bring 
out crying; for example, although cries predominated in the bathroom when 


142 BEHAVIORISM 


their faces were being washed or when they were being bathed, it was 
always possible to produce a laugh. On one occasion the introduction of 
a mouth organ altered the whole tenor of the room, changing distress into 
laughter. Where the youngsters are just being dressed by the ordinary 
procedure, that is, being pulled, twisted and turned, crying nearly always 
results, and where dressing is playfully done, smiles and laughter instead 
of crying are the responses. Attention should be called to the fact, how- 
ever, that we can very easily overdo the matter of amusing the child when 
it is doing the things it has to do. I have seen children who had been spoiled 
in this way undergo torture when a new nurse was called in who did not or 
would not yield to their demand to be amused while being bathed, put to 
bed, dressed or fed. 


While our results again are very incomplete, we have gone far enough 
to show that it is very easy to substitute for a great many of the situations 
in the home which now call out crying, situations that will call out smiling 
(and generally laughter) instead, which, in moderation, is unquestionably 
better so far as concerns the general metabolic state of the organism. 
Furthermore, when we have gone far enough to learn by continual watch- 
ing what the sticking points are in the child’s environment, we can rebuild 
his environment and thereby keep an unfavorable organization from 
developing. 


Should We Implant Negative Responses in Our Children? 


There is a certain amount of sentimentality going the pedagogical 
rounds in this country to the effect that no negative reactions should ever 
be forced on the child. I have never been very much in favor of this 
propaganda. In fact, I believe that certain negative responses should be 
scientifically implanted as a matter of protection to the organism. I don’t 
see any other way out of it. I think, though, we should make a distinction 
between conditioned fear responses and mere negative responses. Nega- 
tive responses conditioned upon the original (unconditioned) fear stimuli 
always apparently involve vast changes in the viscera—possibly always 
disruptive to normal metabolism. Conditioned rage responses, while not 
necessarily negative in character (they include the positive responses in 
fighting, attack, etc.) apparently do the same thing. I have the simple 
facts in view here which Cannon has brought out that in fear and rage 
behavior, digestion and absorption are often completely interfered with— 
food is left in the stomach to ferment and to form a breeding ground for 
bacteria and to set free toxic products. So there is some justice in the 
view that fear and rage behavior are in general harmful to the organism 


EMOTIONS 143 


(yet the race possibly could not have survived if it had not reacted nega- 
tively to loud sounds and loss of support and had not struggled when 
movement was hampered). Love behavior, on the other hand, seems 
usually to heighten metabolism. Digestion and absorption apparently 
take place more rapidly. Questioning of husbands and wives leads to the 
disclosure of the fact that after normal sexual intercourse hunger contrac- 
tions begin in the stomach and food is very frequently sought. 


But to come back to negative reactions. It is at least an opinion of 
mine that where negative responses are built into manual behavior (con- 
ditioned)—such as withdrawal of hands, legs, body, etc., by the use of 
faint noxious stimuli, there is little involvement of the viscera. To make 
myself clear, let me cite a case: I can build in negative behavior to a snake 
in two ways. Just as I show the snake I can make a terrible noise and 
cause the child to fall down and cry out completely terror stricken. Soon 
the mere sight of the snake will have the same effect. Or I can present the 
snake several times and each time as the infant reaches for it I can tap 
its fingers with a pencil and gradually establish the negative reaction with- 
out shock. I have not tried this with a snake, but I have with a candle. A 
child can be conditioned by a severe burn with one stimulation, but this 
involves always a severe reaction. By presenting the candle flame many 
times and each time letting it just heat the finger enough to produce with- 
drawal of the hand, a negative conditioned response can be built up without 
the severe features of shock. Building in negative responses without shock 
requires time, however, 


I cannot tonight dwell too long upon the interesting psychological 
and social factors involved in the building in of negative reactions. 


May I just say dogmatically that our civilization is built upon “don’ts” 
and taboos of many kinds? Individuals living adjustedly in it must learn 
to heed them. Since the negative responses must be built in they should 
be built in as sanely as possible without involving strong emotional re- 
actions. Children and adolescents must not play in the street, run in 
front of automobiles, play with strange dogs and cats, run up and stand 
under the feet of horses, point firearms at people, run any chance of 
catching venereal diseases or having illegitimate children; they must 
not do thousands of other things that I might mention. I am not saying 
that all the negative reactions demanded by society are ethically right (and 
when I say ethically I mean according to the new experimental ethics that 
does not exist today). I don’t know whether many of the taboos now ad- 
hered to are ultimately good for the organism. I am merely saying that 
society exists—it is a fact, and if we live under it we must draw back when 


144 BEHAVIORISM 


social customs say draw back, or we must get our adult hands slapped. 
There is, of course, an ever increasing number of people in the world whose 
hands are tough and who do many tabooed things and take the social 
chastisement that inevitably follows. This means of course that social 
trial and error experimentation is becoming possible—the smoking of 
women, now tolerated in restaurants and hotels and even in many homes, 
is a good example. As long as society rules every act through its agencies 
(suchas political systems, church, family) no learning, no trying out of new 
social responses is possible. In the last 20 years we have seen marked 
changes in the social status of women, marked weakening of marriage ties, 
marked diminution in thoroughness of control of political parties (to wit, 
the overthrow of practically all monarchies), a marked weakening of the 
church’s hold upon genuinely educated people, the lessening of taboos upon 
sex. The danger, of course, comes now from too rapid lessening of control, 
too superficial trials of new forms of behavior, and from the acceptance of 
new methods without sufficient trial. 


Use of Corporal Pumshment in Building in Negative Responses 


The question of corporal punishment in the bringing up of children at 
home and at school comes up periodically for discussion. I believe our 
experiments almost settle the problem. Punishment is a word which 
ought never to have crept into our language. 


Whipping or beating the body is a custom as old as the race. Even 
our modern views on the punishment of criminals and children have as 
their basis the old religious masochistic practices of the church. Punish- 
_ ment in the biblical sense of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” 
honeycombs our whole social and religious life. 


Certainly punishment of children is not a scientific method. As 
parents, teachers and jurists, we are or ought to be interested only in 
setting up ways of acting in the individual that square with group behavior. 
You have already grasped the notion that the behaviorist is a strict deter- 
minist—the child or adult has to do what he does do. The only way he 
can be made to act differently 1s first to untrain him and then to retrain 
him. That both children and adults do things which do not correspond 
with the standards of behavior set up by the home or by the group, is 
due to the fact that the home and the group have not sufficiently trained 
the individual during the formative period. Since the formative period is 
coextensive with life, social training should be continuous throughout life. 


EMOTIONS 145 


It is our own fault, then, that individuals (other than defectives and psy- 
chopaths) go “wrong,” that is, deviate from set standards of behavior— 
and by “our own fault” I mean the fault of the parent, the teacher and 
every other member of the group; we have neglected and are neglecting 
our opportunities. 


But to return to the question of whipping and beating. There is no 
excuse for whipping or beating! 


First, because very often the deviating act occurs many hours before 
father or mother comes home to engage in the act of chastising. Condi- 
tioned responses are not built up by this unscientific procedure. The idea 
that a child’s future bad behavior will be prevented by giving him a licking 
in the evening for something he did in the morning is ridiculous. Equally 
ridiculous, from the standpoint of preventing crime, is our legal and judi- 
cial method of punishment which allows a crime to be committed in one 
year and punishment administered a year or two later—if at all, 


Second, whipping is used more often than not to serve as an emotional 
outlet (sadistic) for parent or teacher. 


Third, often when the beating occurs immediately after the act (the 
only time for it if it is to take place at all), it is not and cannot be regu- 
lated according to any scientific dosage. It is either too mild, therefore not 
a strong enough stimulus to establish the conditioned negative response; or 
too severe, thus stirring up unnecessarily the whole visceral system of the 
child; or the deviating act does not occur frequently enough, with attend- 
ant punishment, to meet the scientific conditions for setting up a negative 
response; or, finally, the beating is repeated so frequently that all effect is 
lost—habituation comes in, leading possibly to the psychopathological con- 
dition known as ‘masochism,’ a condition in which the individual responds 
positively (sexually) to noxious stimull. 


How, then, are we to build in the negative responses which I said 
above it is necessary to build in? I thoroughly believe in rapping a child’s 
fingers when it puts them in its mouth, when it constantly fingers its 
sex organs, when it reaches up and pulls down glass dishes and trays, or 
turns on gas cocks or water hydrants, etc., provided the child is caught in 
the act and the parent can administer the rap at once in a thoroughly 
objective way—just as objectively as the behaviorist administers the faint 
electric shock when building up a negative or withdrawal response to any 
given object. Society, both the group and the immediate parents, uses 
the verbal “don’t” to older children in place of the rap. It will of course 


146 BEHAVIORISM 


always have to use “don’t” but I hope some time we can rearrange the 
environment so that less and less negative reactions will have to be built 
in in both child and adult. 


One bad feature in the whole system of the building in of negative 
responses is the fact that the parent becomes involved in the situation— 
I mean by that becomes a part of the punishment system. The child 
grows up to “hate” the person who has most often to administer the beat- 
ing—usually the father. I hope some time to try out the experiment of 
having a table top electrically wired in such a way that if a child reaches 
for a glass or a delicate vase it will be punished, whereas if it reaches for 
its toys or other things it is allowed to play with, it can get them without 
being electrically shocked. In other words, I should like to make the 
objects and situations of life build in thei own negative reactions, 


Present Methods of Punishment for Crime are Relics of the Dark Ages 


What we have said about punishment in the rearing of children holds 
equally well for adults in the field of crime. Since in my opinion only 
the sick or psychopaths (insane) or untrained (socially untrained) indi- 
viduals commit crimes, society should be interested in just two things: 
(1) Seeing that the insane or psychopathic individuals are made well if 
possible, and if not, placed in well run (non-political) institutions where 
no harm can come to them and where they can do no harm to other 
members of the group. In other words, the fate of those individuals 
should be in medical (psychiatric) hands. The question as to whether 
the hopelessly insane should be etherized has of course been raised time 
and time again. There can be no reasons against it except exaggerated 
sentiment and mediaeval religious mandates. (2) Seeing that the socially 
untrained individuals, not insane or psychopathological, are placed where 
they can be trained, sent to school, made to learn, regardless of their 
age, a trade, made to put on culture, made to become social. Further- 
more, during this period they should be placed where they cannot harm 
other members of the group. Such education and training may take ten 
to fifteen years or even longer. Failing to put on the training necessary 
to fit them to again enter society, they should be restrained always, and 
made to earn their daily bread, in vast manufacturing and agricultural 
institutions, escape from which is impossible. Naturally, no human being 
—criminal or otherwise—should be deprived of air, sunshine, food, exer- 
cise and other physiological factors necessary to optimum living condi- 
tions. On the other hand, strenuous work twelve hours per day will hurt 


EMOTIONSEN) ) a 147 


no one. Individuals put aside thus for additional training should of course 
be kept in the hands of the behaviorists. 


Naturally such a view does away completely with criminal law (but 
not with policing). It does away naturally with the criminal lawyer and 
with legal (criminal) precedent, and with courts for the trial of criminals. 
Many jurists of note agree substantially with this view. But until all 
law books are burned in some great upheaval of nature and until all law- 
yers and jurists suddenly decide to become behaviorists, I never expect 
to see the present retaliation or punishment theory (a religious theory) 
of handling the deviant give place to a scientific theory based upon what 
we know of the establishing and breaking down of conditioned emotional 
responses, 


Implanted Negative Responses and the Prevention of Suicide 


Our discussion above on implanted negative response makes me 
somewhat speculative I have very often wondered why some behav- 
ioristic student of ethics does not supply us with verbal stimuli (call them 
‘motives’ or ‘social values’ if you will) which will help educated, even 
sophisticated individuals to go on living when surrounded by serious 
difficulties. Why should an individual go on living when he is continually 
hungry, cold, deserted, maltreated, misunderstood, in grief, in pain? A 
sociology based upon the premises of the three “needs’—food, sex and 
shelter—cannot answer this question. Continuation of existence under 
such conditions cannot be rationalized on the basis of positive responses, 
no matter what their kind is or their number. We go on living because 
unconditioned and conditioned negative responses have made it impossible 
for us under ordinary conditions to reach out and take the necessary 
positive steps to put an end to our existence. Camouflage it to ourselves 
aS we may, indulge in all the sentimental drivel we like, talk about the 
joy of living and loving, the facts seem to be as I have stated them. But 
we are taught from infancy that to commit suicide condemns us to punish- 
ment hereafter. We have implanted in us from infancy negative reactions 
(conditioned visual responses) to sharp instruments and poisons—nega- 
tive reactions to all objects and situations that may bring on injury 
or death. These are implanted fear reactions rather than the ordinary 
and milder negative reactions I discussed above. So many conditioned 
responses are built in about the act of death that the seen or heard word 
“death,” paralyzes any positive response that the individual might make 
to bring death about. Hence as long as the individual is “normal” (or 
rather as he is normally built today) suicide is impossible, no matter what 


148 BEHAVIORISM 


situation he is in. In pathological cases where there is, for one reason 
or another, a break-down in organization, suicide can and does take place. 
Suicide is in this view always pathological, always means a break-down 
of one’s organized life. Under another system of training, e. g., the 
Japanese, this is not true: suicide is the response as soon as honor is lost. 
There is, then, no emotion or instinct or other unlearned response that 
can give rise to the so-called law of “self preservation” in man. There are 
a few situations, but only a very few, that from birth will call out negative 
responses (as we have already seen, injuring of bodily tissue, burning, 
tearing of skin, bruises, etc., and other noxious stimuli, loud sounds and 
loss of support)— entirely too few to have very much influence upon 
taking care of the individual. The rest are built in by society. And yet 
there are enough of the unconditioned responses present to start the pro- 
cess of negative conditioning. It is that mass of built-in negative re- 
sponses that keeps our life craft riding safely on a “sea of trouble.” 


I hope some day someone will give us a more positive justification 
of life! 


What Are the Most Important Forms of Built-in Emotional Behavior? 


In addition to the various forms of emotional behavior both learned 
and unlearned that we have discussed in this and the preceding lecture, 
there are two other types which interest the behaviorist very greatly. 
These are jealousy and shame. So far the behaviorist has had very little 
opportunity to make any study of them. I believe that both jealousy and 
shame are built in. 


Other forms of emotional behavior, popularly known as sorrow, grief, 
resentment, anger, reverence, awe, justice, mercy, seem to the behaviorist 
to be quite simple. He believes them to be vast super-structures built 
upon the very simple types of unlearned behavior that we have already 
abundantly discussed. 


Jealousy and shame, however, require considerable further study. So 
far I have not had opportunity to observe the first appearance of shame 
and its genetic growth. I am inclined to think that shame is in some way 
connected with the first overt masturbation that involves the orgasm. 
The stimulus is the manipulation of the sex organs, the final responses 
are heightened blood pressure, superficial dilatation of the capillaries of 
the skin known as flushing, among many others. Almost from infancy 
the child is taught not to masturbate or is punished if it masturbates. 
Consequently any situation, verbal or otherwise, connected with the 


EMOTIONS 149 


touching of the sex organs or reference to the sex organs may condition 
the blushing and bowing of the head which nearly always take place in 
masturbation. This, however, is purely speculative and I must lay it 
aside here for future observation. 


_ _I have recently made some observations and experiments upon 
jealousy. 


Jealousy: Ask any group of individuals what they mean by jealousy 
—what the stimulus is that produces it, what the pattern of the response 
is, and you get only the vaguest, most unserviceable kind of replies. Ask 
these same individuals what the unlearned (unconditioned) stimulus is 
that calls out the response; ask them what the unlearned (unconditioned) 
response pattern is. To both questions you get unscientific answers. 
ena individuals say, “Oh, jealousy is a pure instinct.” If we diagram 
thus 


we have to put a question mark under both stimulus and response. 


And yet jealousy is one of the most powerful factors in the organi- 
zation of present day individuals. It is recognized by the courts as one 
of the strongest of ‘motives’ leading to action. Robberies and murders 
are committed because of it; careers are both made and unmade because 
of it; marital quarrels, separations and divorces are probably more fre- 
quently to be traced to it than to any other single cause. Its almost uni- 
versal permeation through the whole action stream of all individuals has 
led to the view that it is an inborn instinct. And yet the moment you 
begin to observe people and try to determine what kinds of situations 
call out jealous behavior and what the details of that behavior are, you 
see that the situations are highly complex (social) and that the reactions 
are all highly organized (learned). This in itself should make us doubt 
its hereditary origin. Let us watch people for awhile to see if their be- 
havior will not throw light upon the situations and the responses, 


What Situations Call Out Jealous Behavior? 


In the first place, as we have said, the situation is always a social 
one—it involves people. What people? Always the person who calls out 
our conditioned love responses. This may be the mother, father, or 
brother, sister or sweetheart, wife or husband, etc. The person may be 
of the same or the opposite sex. The wife-husband situation is second 


150 BEHAVIORISM 


only to the sweetheart one for calling out violent response. This brief 
examination helps us somewhat in our understanding of jealousy. The 
situation is always a substitutive one, that is, conditioned. It involves the 
person calling out conditioned love responses. ‘This generalization, if 
true, takes it out of the class of inherited forms of behavior at once. 


What Are the Responses? 


The responses in adults are legion. I have taken notes on a great 
many cases among both children and adults. To vary our procedure let 
us take the responses of an adult first. Case A. A is a ‘very jealous 
husband,’ married two years to a beautiful young woman only slightly 
younger. They go out frequently to parties. If his wife (1) dances a 
little close to her partner, (2) if she sits out a dance to talk to a man and 
talks in a low tone to him, (3) if in a moment of gaiety she kisses another 
man in the open light of the room before everyone, (4) if she goes out 
even with other women to lunch or tea or to shop, (5) if she invites her 
own group of friends for a party at home—then jealous behavior. is ex- 
hibited. Such stimuli bring out the responses (1) refusal to talk or 
dance with his wife, (2) increased tension of all his muscles, mouth 
shuts tightly, eyes seem to grow smaller, jaw ‘hardens.’ He next with- 
draws himself from other people in the room. His face becomes flushed, 
then black. This behavior may and usually does persist for days after 
the affair is started. He will talk to no one about the affair. Mediation 
is impossible. The jealous state seems to have to run itself down or out. 
The wife herself by no amount of assurance of love, of innocence, by 
no system of apology or obeisance can do anything towards hastening 
recovery. Yet his wife is devoted to him and has never been even in the 
slightest measure unfaithful, as he himself admits verbally when not in 
the jealous state. In a person less well bred, less well schooled, it is easy 
to see that his behavior might become overt—he might blacken his wite’s 
eye or if there were a real male aggressor, might attack or murder him. 


Take the child’s jealous behavior next. The first sign of jealousy 
was noted in child B at about 2 years of age. It shows whenever the 
mother embraces the father, clings to him, kisses him. At 21% years of 
age this child who had never been made the “scapegoat,” who had always 
been allowed to be present and even welcomed into the family love-making, 
began to attack the father whenever the mother embraced the father. He 
(1) pulled at his coat, (2) cried out “my mamma,” (3) pushed his father 
away and crowded in between them. If the kissing continued, the child’s 
reaction state became very marked and intense. Always in the morning 


EMOTIONS 151 


—Sundays especially, when he comes into the bedroom before his parents 
are up—he is taken up and welcomed and made much of by both. And 
yet at 234 years of age he would say to his father, “You going to office, 
dada ?”’—or else give the direct command, “You go to office, dada.” At 
three years of age this boy was sent with his infant brother to his grand- 
mother’s, in charge of a nurse. He was separated from his mother for 
one month. During this time his strong attachment for his mother weak- 
ened. When the parents visited the child (then 37 months of age) no 
jealous behavior was exhibited when they made love in front of him. 
When the parents clung together for a considerable time, to see if jealous 
behavior would finally occur, he merely ran up and hugged first one and 
then the other. This test was repeated for four days with the same results. 


The father then seeing that the old situation failed to call it out, 
tried next attacking the mother, striking her on the body and head and 
shaking her from side to side. She on her part simulated crying, but 
fought back. The youngster stood this for a few minutes, then started 
in for his father tooth and nail and would not let up until the fight was 
over. He cried, kicked, tugged at his father’s leg and struck with his 
hand. 


Next the father remained passive while the mother attacked him. She 
inadvertently punched below the belt, causing the father to double up in no 
simulated way. Nevertheless, the youngster started his attack on his 
father again and continued it even after he was hors de combat. By this 
time the youngster was genuinely disturbed and the experiment had to be 
discontinued. The next day, however, no jealous behavior was exhibited 
when mother and father embraced. 


How Early Does this Form of Jealousy against one or 
the other Parent Occur? 


To further test the genesis of this type of jealous behavior, a test 
was made upon an eleven months old infant boy. This infant was well 
nourished and wholly without conditioned fears, yet there was a strong 
attachment for the mother, but none for the father who often spanked 
his hand when he attempted to suck his thumb and otherwise broke in 
upon his quiet by trying various types of experiment. At eleven months 
he could crawl quickly and for considerable distances. 


When father and mother violently embraced, the youngster could not 
be made to keep his eyes on his parents. Love making between them was 
nothing in his young life. This was tested again and again. There was 


Loe BEHAVIORISM 


no tendency to crawl towards them, much less to crawl in between them. 
Jealousy was absent. ! 


Next the father and mother attacked one another. The floor was 
carpeted and the noise of the blows and the low whimper of the mother 
(or the father in his turn) was not very loud. The fight immediately 
stopped his crawling about, brought prolonged fixation—always of the 
mother and never of the father. As it continued, he whimpered and cried 
out aloud several times but made no effort to enter the fight on either 
side. The noises, shaking of the floor, and the sight of the parents’ faces— 
which offered the same visual stimulus to him as when he himself got slap- 
ped and was made to cry, were sufficiently complex stimuli to call out the 
observed behavior. His behavior was of the fear type partly visually con- 
ditioned. There was apparently no jealousy behavior in this infant, either 
when its parents made love or when either parent attacked the other. 
Eleven months seems to be too tender an age for jealousy to appear, 


Does Jealousy Appear Suddenly when an Only Child 
Has to Face His Infant Brother? 


Many Freudians insist that the beginning of jealousy behavior very 
often dates back in the life of the child to the appearance of a brother or 
a sister. They claim that it starts practically full-blown even though the 
child in question is a year or less than a year of age. And yet, so far as 
I know, no Freudian has ever attempted to put his theories to practical 
experimental test. 


During my own observations on the origin of jealousy, I have had one 
favorable opportunity to observe the behavior of an only child when he 
received his newborn brother. B, whose jealous behavior directed against 
his father I have just told you about, was 2% years of age when the event 
occurred. He had formed a very strong attachment to his mother and to 
his own regular nurse. He had no organized reactions toward any 
youngster under a year of age. The mother had been absent in the hospi- 
tal for two weeks. B was taken care of by his regular nurse during these 
two weeks. The day the mother returned, his own nurse kept B busy in 
his room playing until the conditions for the test were all set. The test 
was made at noon in a well-lighted sitting room. The mother was sitting 
nursing the baby, with her breast exposed. B had not seen the mother 
during the two weeks. In addition to the mother with her infant, there 
were present a trained nurse new to B, a grandmother, and the father. B 
was allowed to walk down the steps alone and into the room. Everyone 


EMOTIONS 153 


had been instructed to remain absolutely quiet and to make the situation 
as natural as possible. B walked into the room and up to his mother, 
leaned on her knee and said, “How do, Mama.” He did not attempt to 
kiss her or hug her. He did not notice the breast, or the baby for 30 
seconds. Then he saw the baby. He said, “Little baby.” Then he took 
the baby’s hands and gently patted them, rubbed its head and its face and 
began to say, “That baby, that baby.” Then he kissed it without any 
-prompting. He was very gentle and tender in all of his responses. The 
trained nurse, who was unknown to him, took up the new baby. He re- 
acted against this, at least verbally, saying, “Mama take baby.” Thus the 
baby was reacted to really as a part of the mother situation and the first 
element of jealousy response was directed against the person who took 
something away from his mother (hampered his mother’s movements). 
Surely this was as typically an un-Freudian reaction as could be imagined. 
This was the first sign of a jealousy response. But the response was posi- 
tive for the infant and not against it—nothwithstanding the fact that the 
brother was usurping his place on his mother’s lap, 


Then the new baby was taken by its nurse to its room and put to bed. 
B tagged along, too. When he came back, the father said, “How do you 
like Jimmie?” And he said, “Like Jimmie—Jimmie sleeping.” He did 
not notice at any time the exposed breast of the mother and really paid 
very little attention to the mother except when the nurse tried to take the 
baby away. During the whole setting, he reacted positively to the baby for 
only a few minutes and then turned to other things, 


The following day, B had to give up his own room which contained 
most of his toys, books, and the like, in preparation for the new baby. He 
was told that Jimmie had to have his room for a while. This situation called 
out only the most eager positive response in helping to push and pull all of 
his own furniture to the new room. He slept in the new room that night 
and every night until the trained nurse left. There was never the slightest 
sign of resentment, jealousy, etc., in his behavior directed against the new 
baby. 


The behavior of these two children has been under constant observa- 
tion for one year now. Never has there been the slightest sign of jealousy. 
The three-year-old today is just as kind and considerate to the one year 
old infant as he was on his first introduction. Not even when nurse, mother 
or father takes the infant up and pets it is there any jealousy. Once a 
new nurse almost succeeded in establishing it by attempting to control the 
older child by saying: “You are a naughty boy. Jimmie is a nice boy—I 


154 BEHAVIORISM 


love him.”’ For just a few days jealousy threatened, but the discharge of 
the nurse saved the situation. 


Although there is no attachment pronounced enough to cause any dis- 
turbance of his daily routine, if the younger child is not around, the older 
youngster takes the part of the one-year-old 1f mother or father attempts 
to chastise the youngster by spanking its hand. The moment the younger 
infant cries, the three-year-old will actually attack either one or both 
parents, saying “Jimmie good boy; you mustn’t make Jimmie cry,” 


Can We Draw Any Conclusions About Jealousy? 


So far our experiments on jealousy are merely preliminary. If any 
generalization at all can be made, it- would seem to take the following 
form: Jealousy is a bit of behavior whose stimulus is a (conditioned) 
love stimulus the response to which is rage—but a pattern of rage contain- 
ing possibly the original visceral components but in addition parts of many 
habit patterns (fighting, boxing, shooting, talking, etc.). We may use this 
diagram to hold our facts together : 


(GH) is OR ECE NOONE ne Meee anette ee (UGC) a 
Sight (or sound) of loved object Stiffening of whole body, 
being tampered or interfered with. | clenching of hands, reddening and 


then blackening of face — pro- 
nounced breathing, fighting, verbal 
recrimination, etc. 
Naturally this is reduced only to the barest schematism. The response 
may take many forms and the stimulus may consist of far more subtle 
factors than I have noted here, but I believe we are on the right track in 
trying to formulate jealousy in these terms, 


Experimental Methods of Studying Adult Emotional Behavior 


During the past few years Benussi in Germany, Burtt and Marston 
in the Harvard Psychological Laboratory, and J. A. Larson in the Research 
Laboratory of the Berkeley School for Police, have done some very inter- 
esting work on the changes which go on in circulation and respiration when 
a ‘guilty’ individual lies or attempts to lie about his crime. This work 
has been of considerable use in the police courts. While the results of 
such tests cannot now and possibly never can be introduced into the court 
as direct evidence for determining guilt or innocence, nevertheless, accord- 
ing to these authors, they have prepared the way for a confession of guilt. 
Let us describe their methods in rather general terms. 


EMOTIONS $55 


Most of you are familiar with the hollow band the physician puts 
around your arm and then pumps up for testing your blood pressure. This 
is one of the most important tests the insurance physician makes when you 
seek to take out a new policy or to increase the amount of your old one. 
Instruments of this same general nature may be made to show not only 
blood pressure, but the form of heart beat, changes in rate of heart beat, 
and the like. Recently Larson has used an instrument which on smoked 
paper actually records circulation changes. 


Another instrument used in this kind of work is the pneumograph, 
an instrument which enables the experimenter to record changes in breath- 
ing. A graphic record made by this instrument on smoked paper will 
show the general form of the breathing curve, changes in its amplitude, 
time of inspiration and expiration, and the like. It is possible, and is the 
usual procedure, to make both a blood pressure record and a breathing 
record at the same time. 


In applying the test we first obtain a normal set of records of breath- 
ing and circulation. Then, after a brief rest, we begin to ask a series of 
perfectly colorless questions to which the subject has to answer “yes” or 
“no.” When the questions are simple in nature and the subject’s “con- 
science” is clear, there is no significant rise in blood pressure and no par- 


ticular change in the breathing curve, 


Suppose, however, I were to put a package of jewelry on the platform 
just before beginning a lecture. After the lecture six of you gather 
around to question me. After all of you leave I discover that my package 
has disappeared. Suppose, next, I send for all of you who had been around 
the desk that hour. I ask each of you about the package. Each one would 
say “No, I didn’t take it.” Suppose, however, I decide to record your 
breathing and circulation. Three of you might be eager to take the test, 
might really demand it so as to prove your innocence. On the other hand, 
three of you might object. This would not prove the innocence of those 
who asked for the test or the guilt of those who refused it. I decide to 
take the breathing and blood pressure records of the whole group. I take 
each of you into the test room, seat you comfortably and, after letting the 
record run for a time, I begin to ask some irrelevant questions mixed in 
with questions which had to do with the theft. I might ask, for example: 
(1) Do you object to this test? (2) Do you smoke? (3) Do you like 
lectures? (4) Do you like the movies? (5) Do you like to dance? (6) 
Did you take the package of jewelry off the platform? (7) Did you just 
lie? (8) Do you gamble? (9) Have you ever been arrested? (10) Did 


156 BEHAVIORISM 


you take the jewelry package? You have to answer each question with a 
direct “yes” or “no.” 


Under these conditions apparently the individual who lies shows a 
marked increase in blood pressure (systolic). Likewise his breathing curve 
shows marked changes. In general, though, blood pressure records seem 
to be more satisfactory than respiratory records. Larson claims that this 
method has been of real service to the police of California in the detection 
of guilt. He says: “In practical application of the present test, it has 
been possible to select records of the guilty from those of the innocent sus- 
pects before a confession. This has been done in about ninety per cent. of 
the cases. How much greater than 90 per cent. the determination is, can- 
not be learned, owing to the disappearance of the suspect, inability to obtain 
a confession, or innumerable other causes.” Considerably more work must 
be done before these results can be finally accepted, 


Word Reaction Methods 


During the past 20 years much has been said and written about the 
word reaction method. The theory of the method is based upon the assump- 
tion that our verbal responses to verbal stimuli are usually pretty rapid 
and smooth running: For example, if I say “cat” to you and ask you to 
respond with another word—any word—just as rapidly as you can, you 
are likely to say “rat” in a second or so, and if I say “father” you are 
likely to say “mother” in an equally short time. But if I knew beforehand 
that on your last trip to Baltimore your sweetheart had rejected you, and 
on the list of stimulus words put the word “Baltimore,” then you might 
fumble on your response word. Stumbling might take any of the follow- 
ing forms: (1) no response—complete blocking; (2) a lengthened time of 
response; (3) a response in too loud or too low a voice; (4) an especially 
rapid response; (5) a response with other accessory reactions such as 
blushing, laughter, hanging of head, etc, 


The method has many complications that we need not go into. It 
has been used considerably by psychoanalysts for the purpose of finding 
leads into so-called “unconscious, complexes.” (Since we as behaviorists 
find no need of an unconscious, I forego discussion of its use in analysis.) 
Its use has been attempted in police work for the purpose mainly of con- 
fronting suspects with their own emotional disturbance when responding 
to significant word stimuli—that is, to words connected with the crime. 
It is sometimes useful in leading to a confession. The suspect, being in 
awe of the method and being made to believe that the test has proved his 
guilt, confesses. 


EMOTIONS ileys 


That the method is not very useful in any field is a growing convic- 
tion. Our habit of responding to words depends upon our organization to 
those words. If I am in a work shop I can pick up this tool, that tool 
and the other tool and use them with equal speed and with equal absence 
of trial or other accessory movements (without fumbling). Another 
innocent-looking tool, say a curved chisel, I fumble with considerably. Yet 
they are all wood-working tools and I am pretty familiar with such tools. 
Words are not different from tools. Fumbling with response words may 
mean lack of practice with stimulus words, 


The method has been used as a plaything of the psychologists—and it 
is a pretty toy. I could send six of you out of the room, with an assistant. 
The assistant would give one of you at random a card instructing that one 
to walk over to the library and propose to the young girl at the desk. I 
could then put the six of you through the word reaction test and select 
the proposer in the course of a very few minutes. Furthermore, my 
assistant might instruct the ‘culprit’ to lie and attempt in every way to 
deceive me. I think I could tell, but I would make some errors, how 
many of the remaining five individuals had ‘guilty’ knowledge of the affair, 
that is, had seen the card of instruction, and how many had not seen the 
card, 


You can readily understand that under the inexact and insecure knowl- 
edge the experimenter has to work with in police and psychiatric cases, 
failures are quite frequent. We do not know enough about the crime or 
past emotional situation to frame a crucial set of stimulus words. For 
this reason, among many others, the method has little applicability to 
criminology or to psychiatry. 


There are many other experimental methods of studying emotional 
behavior—ranging from questionnaires that you have to fill in about your 
past life to the use of the galvanometer which is an instrument that 
measures the varying resistance of the body to faint electrical currents. 
On account of their technical nature and the unsatisfactory results com- 
ing from their use, we may safely neglect them in this lecture, 


Summary :—We must bring this long lecture to a close. We have 
studied many phases of the human being’s emotional life. I hope you have 
got from it the behaviorist’s main contention—that man’s emotional life 
is built up bit by bit by the wear and tear of environment upon him; that 
hitherto the process has been hit or miss. The various forms of behavior 
have grown up unscrutinized by society. I think you believe with me now 
that we can build up emotional reactions in an orderly way—in any speci- 


158 BEHAVIORISM 


fied way as soon as society finds out which way it wants them built up. In 
other words, the process of building them in is at least partly understood. 
Furthermore, I think you will again agree when IJ say that we are beginning 
to understand how to tear them down and out once they have been estab- 
lished. The future development of methods along this latter line interests 
us all—there are precious few of us who haven’t some childish loves, rages 
or fears that we would like to lose. Such methods will enable us to sub- 
stitute natural science in our treatment of the emotionally sick in place of 
the doubtful and passing unscientific method now known as psychoanaly- 
sis. 


May the behaviorist, though, interject here a word of caution about 
his own views? All of his conclusions are based now upon too few cases 
and too few experiments. This will be remedied in the near future. More 
and more students are at work upon emotional behavior using behavioristic 
methods. No sane person can ever again use the old introspective method 
with which James and his immediate followers came so near wrecking 
this most thrilling part of psychology. 


In our next lecture we will take up the steps we use in acquiring our 
great system of bodily habits, our acts of skill, vocations and the like. 


Ix 
OUR MANUAL HABITS 


How They Start; How We Retain Them 
and How We Discard Them 


Introduction :—In the last lecture we left the human infant in a some- 
what helpless and precarious state of development. Even with all the or- 
ganization (conditioning) taking place in its unlearned activities, it is still 
quite unable to fight very many worldly battles. If we contrast the develop- 
ment of the year-old child with that of the year-old monkey, we are struck 
at once by the contrast. 


The year-old monkey dashes hither and yon, jumping from pillar to 
post, squealing the adult cry of its parents. It cannot fight with its parents 
for food, so it resorts to trickery. It gets into a corner, screams, and tears 
at a stick or watering pan as though some enemy attacked. The parents* 
leave their own food to come to the rescue of the youngster. The young- 
ster stops squealing immediately and dashes to the food trough and steals 
as much as his food pouches, mouth and paws will hold. On their return 
the mother or father, or both, may strike, bite or even knock down the 
youngster, if he has not made good his escape. We are reminded, in 
watching the year-old monkey, of the behavior of the oversophisticated 
twelve-year-old newsboy. At one year of age the human infant still gets 
all of its food at the mother’s breast or from the bottle. It still gurgles and 
and coos, saying no words at all or at best only ten or twelve. It moves 
about by crawling or by standing erect and pulling itself from place to 
place through the aid of opportunely placed pieces of furniture. Some 
adult has to fight its battles for it and protect it. It seems to be true, 
with some exceptions, that the higher we go in the animal series, the more 
dependent the organism is upon learned behavior. 


Notwithstanding the human infant’s helplessness, he is slowly to 
emerge into a being the like of which can nowhere be found in the animal 
kingdom. Greater development in three systems of habit forever differen- 
tiates him: (1) The number, delicacy and accuracy of visceral or emotional 
habits, which we discussed in the last two lectures; (2) the number, com- 
plexity, and fineness of his laryngeal or verbal habits, which we will discuss 
in the next lecture; (3) the number and fineness of his manual habits, 
which we will now consider. 


159 


160 | BEHAVIORISM 


I hope you have often marveled, as I have, over the human being’s 
enormous capacity for forming finger, hand, arm, leg and trunk habits. In 
several of the preceding lectures I have called this whole system the system 
of manual habits. I still wish to use this term. We must be sure to make 
the word manual include organization in trunk, legs, arms and feet. 


The Shifting of our Environment Leads 
to Habit Formation 


You are prepared to believe now from what you know of the human 
infant and child that it is constantly being stimulated by sights, sounds, 
contacts, smells and tastes from the outside of its body, and by secretions, 
absence of secretions, by pressure, lack of pressure, by movements of 
food along the intestinal tract and by changes in the position of muscles, 
both striped and unstriped, inside the body. It is, thus, under constant 
stimulation. Now the human is so built (and so are all other animals) that 
it must move when these stimuli assail it from within or without. The 
whole group of visual, auditory, tactual, temperature, smell and taste 
stimuli (so-called objects of the external world) constitutes what most 
people think of as environment. I want you to think of this as merely part 
of man’s environment, namely his external environment (more or less com- 
mon to groups). The whole group of visceral, temperature, muscular and 
glandular stimuli, both conditioned and unconditioned, present inside the 
body, are just as truly objects of stimulation as are chairs and tables. They 
constitute the other part of man’s (each man’s) environment—his internal 
environment, an environment not shared by others. This part of man’s en- 
vironment is left out usually in all discussions of the relative influence of 
environment and heredity. The organism, being stimulated always by both 
environments simultaneously, naturally never is responding at any one time 
just to the inside or just to the outside. Under the stimulus of stomach 
contractions the individual will start to snatch a loaf of bread; the visual 
stimulus of the policeman may stay his hand and lead to the taking up of 
another notch in his belt. Under the action of a group of stimuli coming 
from the sex organs, he may start to seek a mate, but the flabby condition 
of his purse may hold in abeyance conventional courtship and marriage, 
and verbal precepts instilled in his youth (laryngeal verbal stimulus) may 
check association with a temporary mate. 


As long as these powerful stimuli from outside and inside his body— 
such as absence of food, absence of sex and absence of customary activity 
both manual and verbal—assail it, the human organism has to keep respond- 
ing, keep moving. These stimuli call out ceaselessly movements of fingers, 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 161 


hands, trunk, legs, arms—and of the internal motor and glandular organs 
of response as well. These movements in the infant have been called 
“random.” They are naturally not random if you mean that they are not 
caused like other movements. ‘They are direct responses to stimulation 
and are just as orderly as are movements later on in life. 


Ceaseless stimulation, ceaseless movement are the order by day and by 
_ night—not even in sleep is the organism unassailable by stimulation nor is 
it ever motionless. 


Yes, you say, but doesn’t the organism ever become adjusted ? In these 
days of psychologists and psychoanalysts we often hear of “adjustments.” 
We are told that the individual must get adjusted. Sometimes you wonder 
what these eminent scholars mean. The behaviorist believes that the only ad- 
justed person is a dead person—one from whom no response can be called 
out to any stimulus. The facts seem to show that when the individual by 
responding (by learned or unlearned reactions, or both in combination) to 
stimulus A, changes his environment in such away that he next has to react 
to stimulus B, then one of two things takes place: Stimulus B may actual- 
ly remove stimulus A; or, by reacting to stimulus B, he may so change his 
environment that he passes out of the range of stimulus A. In the first case 
Ais annihilated or “downed” ; in the second case A ceases to be an effective 
stimulus in the new environment. Does this sound complicated? Let us 
take an example. Hunger contractions begin in the stomach (stimulus 
A). The individual begins to move about. He reaches an environment 
where food is plentiful—in other words, he goes to the pantry and eats 
(stimulus B). The hunger contractions (stimulus A) stop immediately. 
This represents adjustment, you will say. To be sure he is no longer 
stimulated by food, but after having eaten, other stimuli, non-food stimuli, 
immediately become effective and lead to other reactions—thus proving my 
contention that the organism 1s not and cannot be “adjusted” for longer 
than a period corresponding almost to a mathematical point. Let me illus- 
trate the second case—where the reaction of an individual to stimulus A 
leads to such an alteration of the environment that stimulus A is no longer 
effective. Individual X is lying on the bed trying to get to sleep. The arc 
light on the street shines through a crack in the shade. He wriggles around 
a bit. It still strikes his eye. He wriggles about some more. Again it 
strikes the eye. He puts his head under the covers. There the stuffiness 
and the heat soon make him put his head out. Again the insistent light 
strikes him. Then he gets up and does the one sensible thing—he pins a 
heavy piece of paper over the break in the shade. This response to A leads 
him into a new environment which no longer contains A as a stimulus. 
The two cases are thus on analysis not very different. The individual gets 


162 BEHAVIORISM 


rid of the stimulus! But he gets rid only of that stimulus! Some other 
one can now effectively and successfully assail him. What the psycholo- 
gists mean by maladjustment usually is that two stimuli with opposed 
action tendencies keep the organism from getting out of range of the in- 
citing stimulus. The term “adjustment” however is convenient and we 
may still use it provided we mean by it the momentary point where the 
individual by his action has quieted a stimulus or has gotten out of its 
range. Let us mean by “adjustment,” then, something similar to the end 
of a trial in learning—where the animal gets food, sex or water, or becomes 
oriented away from a stimulus that produces negative reaction, etc. 


Our illustrations so far show cases where the individual possesses an 
organization adequate to “meet the situation.” This means merely that he 
has had to form habits of such a type that he can either blot out stimulus 
A or move in such a way that he can get out of its effective range. He 
reaches that happy state through no flowery path. He has to form habits 
to effect it. He has learned to go to the pantry when he is hungry. Not 
so the one-year-old—he can only cry. The adult has learned to get up and 
pin a piece of paper over the crack in the shade when the light strikes his 
eye. The three-year-old can only call aloud to his mother to shut out the 
light. 


This is the keynote of the formation of all our habits. Some stimulus 
in the outside environment or in the inside environment (please remember 
that the so-called “absence” of a stimulus is also a perfectly good stimulus) 
sets the individual moving. He may move in many ways, do many hun- 
dreds of things, before he blots out stimulus A or moves himself beyond 
its range. If, when he gets into the same situation again, he can accomplish 
the one or the other of these results more rapidly and with fewer move- 
ments, then we say he has learned or has formed a habit, 


Watching the Steps in Habit Formation 


To understand the formation of basal habits, we must again observe 
the human infant. Take a baby brought up on the bottle. When he is 
three months of age, slowly present the bottle of milk. When it is close 
to him, almost within reaching distance, you will find that his body begins 
to wriggle and squirm, his hands, feet and arms become slightly active, 
his eyes fixate, his mouth moves, he cries, but he does not extend his 
arms towards the bottle, At the end of the test always give him his 
bottle immediately. Repeat the procedure the next day. Notice that all 
of the bodily movements are a bit more pronounced. As this routine is 
repeated daily, movements of the whole body become still more perceptible 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 163 


but the arms are levers built to permit wide excursive movements. The 
trunk, the legs and the feet, while they are levers, are levers of a different 
kind—powerful ones but with slight range of movement. The chance of 
the arms and the hands striking or touching the bottle before the rest of 
the body is great. This is why our habits of manipulation are formed with 
the arms, hands and fingers, and not with the feet, legs and toes. If the 
pater loses its arms, or has never possessed them, these habits form with 
the feet. 


Once the bottle or, better for our immediate purposes, some other 
food object, like a piece of candy or a lump of sugar, is touched, the hand 
closes over it (unlearned grasping). It is then carried to the mouth (part 
of a habit system previously learned). In 30 days, by giving the baby 10 
or 12 trials of this kind each day, the habit of reaching for a small object 
and carrying it to the mouth becomes nearly perfect. Note at this point 
that the reaction to the milk bottle or lump of sugar is a conditioned visual 
response. The infant has become conditioned through having been fed 
with the bottle, so that even in this simple experiment we are starting with 
a certain amount of organization which has been going on for a consider- 
able time. If we wanted him to reach for a pencil or some other object 
not connected with food, we would have to start farther back and condition 
him to the pencil before that stimulus would call out a response. Note, 
too, that the stimulus of the bottle calls out a more and more complicated 
reaction. First just squirming, then more and more active movements of 
the whole body but most active movements of arms, hands and fingers, as 
I have pointed out before. In other words, the reaction is becoming 
changed, organized or, aS we sometimes say, integrated. This is what I 
meant in Lecture II when I spoke about the reaction itself becoming con- 
ditioned. Possibly it is better to speak of the reaction as becoming more 
and more highly integrated (newer and newer elements becoming condi- 
tioned in such a way that they come together and function as a new or 
more complicated response). 


Note, finally, that as the arm, hand and finger movements are perfected 
—that is, as the response becomes more highly organized—movements not 
related to the business in hand, such as in this instance those of the trunk, 
legs and feet, die away. In its perfected form, reaching takes place with 
perfect efficiency; movements not demanded in the act do not appear. 
Reaching is the child’s basal primary manual habit. Very soon it grows 
more complex. He not only reaches and grasps but he learns to let the 
object drop at times. Again, he reaches not only for an object held out 
in front of him, but for objects to the right or left of him. Finally he 
learns to turn and twist and pull at his objects—to pull the top from a 


164 BEHAVIORISM 


box, to take the cork from a bottle, to stick the end of his rattle into a box, 
to close and open the lid of the box. This whole complicated group of 
habits starting with reaching we call manipulation. Anyone who thinks 
that manipulation is an instinct should work daily with a baby from the 
120th day to the 200th day. The baby learns to manipulate objects and 
even its own bodily parts literally by the sweat of its brow. 


I do not want to mislead you here into thinking that habits of ma- 
nipulation involve only arm, hand and finger movements. You understand 
perfectly from all that has gone before that any movement such as reach- 
ing for an object brings about an adjustment of practically every muscle of 
the body—and let us include the viscera here as well. In other words, 
every movement accurately executed involves a response of the whole body 
in each and in every part. This is what we mean by a total reaction. This 
is what we mean by perfect integration. Movements of the shoulder, the 
arm, the elbow, the wrist, the palm, the fingers, the trunk, the legs, the 
feet, yes, even breathing, circulation, etc., all have to take place according 
to a certain order. This order must be beautifully timed and the amount 
of energy in each muscular group must be just right before any fine act of 
skill, such as hitting the bull’s eye with the rifle or making a perfect shot 
at billiards, can take place. 


With these early basal habits of reaching and manipulation estab- 
lished, the infant begins his mastery of the world. The steps from fashion- 
ing his implements of clay and mud to fashioning them from tempered 
steel; from bridging a stream by crudely felling a tree to bridging a part of 
the ocean with steel and concrete; from building houses of rough grass and 
clay to building the skyscraper of concrete and steel, are largely but 
illustrations of the growth of manual habits, 


Example of the Growth of a Habit 


To make the whole process a little more concrete, let us put in front 
of the three-year-old child, whose habits of manipulation are well estab- 
lished, a problem box—a box that can be opened only after a certain thing 
has been done; for example, he has to press inward a small wooden button. 
Before we hand it to him, we show him the open box containing several 
small pieces of candy and then we close it and tell him that if he opens it 
he may have a piece of candy. This situation is new to him. None of his 
previously formed manipulation habits will completely and instantly work 
in this situation. None of his unlearned reactions will help him very much. 
What does he do? That depends upon his previous organization. If well 
organized by previous handling of toys, he goes at the problem at once— 


OUR MANDAL HABITS 165 


(1) he picks the box up, (2) he pounds it on the floor, (3) he drags it 
round and round, (4) he pushes it up against the baseboard, (5) he turns 
it over, (6) he strikes it with his fist. In other words, he does everything 
he has learned to do in the past in similar situations. He displays his 
whole repertoire of acts—brings all of his previously acquired organization 
to bear upon the new problem. Let us suppose that he has 50 learned and 
unlearned separate responses at his command. At one time or another 
during his first attempt to open the box, let us assume that he displays, as 
he will, nearly all of them before he pushes the button hard enough to 
release the catch. The time the whole process takes, we will say, is about 
twenty minutes. When he opens it, we give him his bit of candy, close up 
the box and hand it to him again. The next time he makes fewer move- 
ments; the third time fewer still. In 10 trials or less he can open the box 
without making a useless movement and he can open it in two seconds. 


Why is the time cut down, and why do movements not necessary to 
the solution gradually drop out of the series? This has been a hard prob- 
lem to solve because none of us, I believe, has ever simplified the problem 
enough to really bring experimental technique to bear upon it. I have tried 
to explain on what we may call a frequency and recency basis, why the one 
movement finally persists whereas all the rest die away. I think I can 
make clear to you what we mean. Let us designate each of the separate 
acts of the three-year-old by a number. We will designate the final act— 
pressing the button which opens the box—number 50. Then on the first 
trial all of the 50 acts will occur (and many may appear more than once), 
let us say, in chance order: 


mre eS etre LOMML ONC cc len eLC emu Cin Te 00 


On the second trial: 
Tem ee ALO AS A/a CLC ee Nein Wea Rael a ot 50 


On the third trial: 
LEO Ck a LO CL Cue ea NY Sacies kT ee 50 


On the ninth trial: 
IPE NCL Cay teen ECE en OL! 50 


On the tenth trial and all succeeding trials: 
50 


In other words, number 50 tends to come earlier and earlier in the 
series and by doing so there is less and less opportunity for other move- 
ments to appear. Why? On our premise we can see that response number 


166 BEHAVIORISM 


50 is tne only one that occurred on each and every trial; that is, the en- 
vironment in the shape of the person conducting the test arranges the series 
in such a way that 50 has to be the end of the series—the infant then gets 
food; the box is closed and is handed to him again. Act number 50 is 
therefore the one most frequently repeated—more frequently, that is, than 
any of the other 49 acts, 


Again, since act number 50 is always the last response in the previous 
trial, there is some reason for believing that it will appear sooner in the 
series of acts on the next succeeding trial. This is what is called the factor 
of recency. The recency and frequency factors as explanations of the for- 
mation of habit have been criticized by some writers—among others: 
Professor Joseph Peterson, of George Peabody College, Nashville, Ten- 
nessee, and Professor Bertrand Russell. No experimental test, that I 
consider crucial at any rate, has ever been made in this very important 
field. Only a few psychologists have been interested in the problem. Most 
of the psychologists, it is to be regretted, have even failed to see that there 
is a problem. They believe habit formation is implanted by kind fairies. 
For example, Thorndike speaks of pleasure stamping in the successful 
movement and displeasure stamping out the unsuccessful movements. Most 
of the psychologists talk, too, quite volubly about the formation of new 
eet et in the brain, as though there were a group of tiny servants of 

ulcan there who run through the nervous system with hammer and chisel 
digging new trenches and deepening old ones. 


I am not sure that the problem when phrased in this way is a soluble 
one. I feel that there must come some simpler way of envisaging 
the whole process of habit formation or else it may remain insoluble. 
Since the advent of the conditioned reflex hypothesis in psychology with 
all of the simplifications (and I am often fearful that it may be an over- 
simplification!) I have had my own laryngeal processes stimulated to 
work upon this problem from another angle. 


The Relation of Habit to Conditioned Reflexes 


The relationship, theoretically, between the simplest cases of the con- 
ditioned responses we have studied and the more complicated, integrated, 
spaced and timed habit responses we are considering tonight, seems to me 
to be quite simple. It is the relationship apparently of part to whole— 
that is, the conditioned reflex is the unit out of which the whole habit is 
formed. In other words, when a complicated habit is completely analyzed, 
each unit of the habit is a conditioned reflex. Let us go back a moment 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 167 


to the type of conditioned reflex we have already considered in previous 
lectures : 


Electrical Contact (Noxious) Movement of the foot 
When conditioned, the 
visual stimulus of circle 


This is a simple type of conditioned response. Now by hypothesis every 
complicated habit is made up of just such units. I shall try to make this a 
little clearer. Suppose in place of conditioning my subject to withdraw 
his foot when a visual stimulus of a circle is shown, I condition him to 
turn, say, one step to the right. When he turns to the right he faces a 
visual stimulus of a square. To this stimulus he is conditioned to walk 
forward five steps. He then faces a triangle. To this stimulus he is con- 
ditioned to move two steps to the right. This puts him face to face with a 
cube. In response to this he has to step up three steps instead of turning 
to right or left. You can see from this simple illustration that I can lead 
him all around the room and back to the starting point. I do this by 
arranging a series of visual stimuli to each of which I condition him so 
that he must move in a certain way—that is, turn to the right, to the left, 
move upward, downward, forward or backward, put his right hand up, 
stretch out his left hand, and the like. Now suppose each time I begin 
experimenting upon him, I run him through the whole series from the 
beginning. Isn’t this a description (after the whole system has been turned 
over to kinaesthesis—see p. 176) of just what happens when the rat or the 
human learns, say, a complicated maze? Does not every alley, bypath or 
turn in the maze represent a unit in the whole process of learning the 
maze? Isn’t typewriting, piano playing and every other special act of skill 
resolvable or analyzable into just such a set of units? Of course in real 
life, in establishing separate conditioned reflexes making up the whole 
habit, we sometimes use food or we pet the child to condition it when the 
right response is made; we may cuff it or otherwise punish it for a wrong 
response or allow it to run itself down into blind alleys, bringing on partial 
fatigue (which is an equivalent of punishment). 


Calls out same movement of foot 


And why are these units timed and spaced as they are? Why is the 
series arranged as it is? There is no order or sequence as such in the 
world we live in—except in a few such things as the sun, moon, stars, etc., 
and even these are obscured for days and weeks sometimes. Even they 
are not orderly enough for us to steer a ship by, hence the compass and 
sextant. The answer is this: Society, or the accident of environment places 
them that way. By society I mean the men and women constituting it 
who have set up complicated patterns of response that must be literally fol- 


168 BEHAVIORISM 


lowed. Words have a certain number of letters and they follow one 
another in definite sequence established by Mr. Johnson or Mr. Webster 
and our other early lexicographers. The holes of the golf course must be 
played in a certain sequence, pool balls must be shot into certain pockets. 
By accident of environment I mean, for instance, the simple fact that if 
you are to go from your own home to the old swimming hole you must (1) 
go to the right of a certain hill, (2) cross a small stream, (3) pass through 
a grove of pine trees, (4) follow down the left bank of a dry stream until 
you (5) get to the cow pasture, (6) then from behind a clump of large 
willow trees (7) you have come to your desired haven. Each of the num- 
bers represents a visual stimulus that must be reacted to, at least during 
the learning stages. 


You may say “Yes” to all this, “but what of it? Is the explanation 
of the formation of a conditioned reflex any simpler than the explanation 
of this phenomena we have been calling habit?” My answer is: Even 
though we cannot “explain” a conditioned reflex, we have by our analysis 
reduced to simpler terms a complicated process which we have neither 
been able to solve nor, apparently, to begin experimentation upon. I be- 
lieve we can now turn our formulation over to the physiologist or to the 
physiological chemist for solution. 


The problem we leave with him is: 


Stimulus X will not now call out reaction R; stumulus V will call out 
reaction R (unconditioned reflex); but when stimulus X is presented first 
and then Y (which does call out R) shortly thereafter, X will thereafter 
call out R. In other words, stimulus X becomes ever thereafter substitut- 
able for Y.* 


The physiologist may come back at once with some such explanation 
as this: “You are wrong in your assumption about X not stimulating the 
organism. X does stimulate the whole organism and consequently does 
faintly arouse reaction R, only not strongly enough to appear as an overt 
response. Y does call out R overtly because the organism is biologically 
built to respond overtly with R when stimulated by Y (unconditioned 
response). But after Y has called out R, resistance or inertia in this 
whole sensory motor segment is lessened to such an extent that X, which 
only faintly called out R, will now call out R overtly.” Certainly if the 


1 This is not an exaggeration. I have seen a conditioned response firmly set up in a child by 
one contact with a hot radiator, a conditioned response which has been retained for two 
years without further training. If we should keep our old habit terminology, we should 
have in this example a habit formed by a single trial. There can be then in thig case 
no “stamping in of the successful movement’ and no “stamping out of the unsuccessful 
movement. 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 169 


physiologist attempts to explain the various phenomena underlying con- 
ditioned responses at the present time, he will have to couch his explana- 
tions in terms of resistance in the nervous system, interference, summation, 
inhibition, reinforcement, facilitation, all or none law, etc., because these 
are the phenomena he works with; but they are very complicated phe- 
nomena, far too complicated for us even to attempt to describe them. 
Until he has reduced them to electrical and chemical processes I am afraid 
he cannot help us very much. 


Fortunately we can continue our work in behavior without awaiting 
the true explanation of these biological phenomena couchied in physico- 
chemical terms. 


Some Details of the Learning Curve 


Below (fig. 16) is the curve showing the records of 19 rats in learn- 
ing the complicated Hampton Court maze (modified). The horizontal line 
shows the number of trials the rats were given. Each rat was tested 
separately. Each point on the vertical line shows the average number of 
minutes it took the rats to reach the food on the various trials. Note that 












Se Sao COUN AAMAS tS s dT ti JO ek =F 25 Par ils 
hig 16 


This curve shows the progress 19 white rats made in learning the complicated 
Hampton Court Maze. The vertical line shows the number of minutes required to 
get to the food. The horizontal line shows the number of trials given. Thus, on 
the first trial an average of 16 minutes was required; on the thirtieth trial approxi- 
mately 20 seconds. Note that improvement at first was very rapid and then went on 
more and more slowly. 


170 BEHAVIORISM 


the first trial required on the average over 17 minutes. During this time 
the rat was running around the maze, into blind alleys, running back to the 
starting point, starting for the food again, biting at the wires around him, 
scratching himself, smelling this spot and that on the floor. Finally he got 
to the food. He was allowed only a bite. Again he was put back into the 
maze. The taste of the food made him almost frantic in his activity. He 
dashed about more rapidly. The average time for the group on the second 
trial is only a little over 7 minutes; on the fourth trial not quite 3 minutes; 
from this point on to the 23rd trial the improvement is very gradual. Then 
improvement seems to cease (with this method of training). Whether or 
not they have reached the physiological limit of training, cannot be de- 
termined from this curve. Less frequent practise than five trials per day 
might create a new situation which would bring about improvement. 
Partial starvation might bring about improvement. Many other factors 
may be operative in bringing it about (see page 171). 


I have chosen this animal curve to illustrate the details of learning be- 
cause most of the curves showing the learning of humans have many com- 
plications. When we work with rats we can keep the stimulus fairly con- 
stant. The rat has to run that maze five times or he does not get his full 
quota of food. At the end of his fifth and last trial for the day he can eat 
his fill, The human being becomes bored while learning. Other things 
stimulate him. The internal environment is complicated; internal speech 
(thought), for example, may always be a disturbing factor. Social and 
economic factors may enter. 


His learning curves on, say, typewriting or telegraphy, for examples, 
often show so-called resting places or plateaus in the learning process. 
These are periods where no improvement is taking place, where the curve 
remains horizontal instead of constantly dropping. How to get individuals 
off these plateaus and to start improving again is one of the problems both 
in business and in the laboratory. The offering of so-called incentives, 
such as increases in salaries, bonuses, participation in profits, increased 
responsibilities, has been tried in business, resulting in rapid improve- 
ment at first, followed usually by another plateau. Sometimes the trouble 
is a family situation—a sick wife or child, or the individual may be jealous 
of his wife. Sometimes it is economic—that is, the individual has as much 
money as he needs to get along in his group; there is no stimulus to im- 
provement. Usually_when increased demands are made upon him, im- 
provement begins again. He may get married, he may have a child, he 
may move to another more expensive city. No cure-all method for bring- 
ing improvement can be found. 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 171 


It seems to be a human failing to stop improving at the lowest econo- 
mic level that enables an individual to get along in his group. People are 
lazy.. Few want to work; the sentiment of the times is all against it. The 
least work and the sloppiest you can get by on is the 1925 order of the day 
in most industries. The worker, be he executive, foreman or manual 
laborer, often rationalizes it to himself in this way: “I am not working for 
myself; why should I slave for a corporation and let someone else get all 
the profits of my work?” The individual loses sight of the fact that the 
improvement in skill and the general organization that come in work 
habits are his own. They are personal possessions in which no one else can 
share. The formation of early work habits in youth, of working longer 
hours than others, of practising more intensively than others, is probably 
the most reasonable explanation we have today not only for success in any 
line, but even for genius. The only geniuses I have ever met have been 
thoroughly hard working fellows. 


What Factors Influence the Formation of Manual Habits 


The factors influencing the formation of manual habits (and verbal 
as well) have never been worked out in a wholly satisfactory manner. 
The results of experiments are conflicting and there is considerable varia- 
tion even in theory. The problems themselves are interesting however. 
Let us raise some of them and give examples of the types of work now 
going on to solve them. 


(1) The effect of age on habit formation:—We know very little 
about the effect of age upon habit formation in the human. There seems 
to be a curious resistance to working at the problem. We know the differ- 
ence between an old rat’s way and a young rat’s way of learning the maze. 
We have charted the difference in the number of steps they take, in the 
length of time they consume on each successive trial and in the final time of 
running errorless trials. A rat apparently never grows too old to learn the 
maze. There is very little difference in the number of trials required by the 
young rats and by the old rats to learn the maze. The old rats do less 
scampering about; they are slower in their explorations. Their final run- 
ning time—that is, the minimal tinte in which they can run the maze after 
it is learned—is considerably longer than that of the young animals. 


We have no similar series of facts on humans. It is obvious that 
humans stop learning too soon. Something ought to be done to disturb the 
average householder once in a while and force him to learn something new; 
but we have no control over him. In the case of the animal, we have com- 
plete control over food, water, sex and other factors in its environment that 


172 BEHAVIORISM 


I have already brought out. Only an earthquake, a flood or some other 
catastrophe can put the average adult individual back into a situation 
where he has to learn something new. This explains, too, why there are 
so few experiments upon human learning. The psychologists know that 
the stimulus cannot be kept constant or the same in different laboratories. 
Most of the work on learning has, therefore, been incidental—class room 
devices, doctors’ dissertations, and the like. We have no real facilities for 
doing the complicated work which should be done on human learning. 
Some day we ought to have great laboratories where squads can be kept at 
work. Their food, water, sex and shelter could then be kept under very 
definite control—this all by way of proof of the fact that there is no real 
evidence that the human ever needs to quit learning. If the situation is 
urgent enough, the man of 60, 70 and, yes, even 80 can learn. James was 
right when he said most people do not learn after 30, but there is no reason 
for it except that most people after 30 have explored the mysteries of sex 
and get their food and water without speeding up or having to do any- 
thing unusual in order to obtain it. Poor as they are in their vocation, they 
can still live. 


(2) Distribution of practise:—Considerable work has been done 
both in the manual field and in the verbal field on the effect of variously 
distributing practise in learning. 


Shall we give our rat learning the maze five trials per day, three trials 
per day, one trial per day or one trial every other day? If we take differ- 
ent groups of animals and train each group in a different way, we find, 
strange to say, that the less frequently the practise is given within certain 
limits, the more efficient is each unit of practise. In other words, if each 
of the groups gets only a total of 50 trials, the longer the interval between 
the various 50 practise periods the better the results. (Dr. J. L. Ulrich) 
Dr. K. S. Lashley found the same thing to be true for humans learning to 
shoot the English long bow. Others working upon typewriting and upon 
other acts of skill have also confirmed this general principle. 


Rosalie Rayner Watson (Psychological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins 
University) in her unpublished dissertation, presents some interesting re- 
sults bearing on several phases of the learning process. All of her work 
was upon the learning of adults to throw a small steel-pointed dart with 
feathered shaft at a target. The target was a piece of cork matting 8 x 8 
feet tacked vertically upon a frame. In the center of the target was a two- 
inch white paper bull’s eye. The subjects threw the darts from a distance 
of 20 feet. The first problem she undertook to study was the effect of 
continuous practise upon learning—in other words, what would happen if 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 173 


individuals threw darts at the rate of one every two minutes for 24 hours? 
The curve below (fig. 17) shows what actually happened. Ten persons 
took part in the experiment. Each shot in turn once every two minutes 
beginning at 8 P.M. Saturday evening and ending at 8 P.M. Sunday 
evening. The last four hours were used for testing the effects of drugs so 
that only 20 are shown. The moment each individual shot was made, the 
distance in inches of the dart from the center of the bull’s eye was mea- 
sured, Fach point on the curve is thus an average of approximately 300 
shots. Food was taken at six-hour intervals. Eating was not allowed 





it 2345 9078 9WUR 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Hours 
8& PM Saturday 8& PM Sunday, 


Fig'7 

This curve shows what happens when 10 subjects throw darts at a target every 
two minutes for 20 hours. The vertical line shows the error—that is the distance 
the shot was from the center of the target. The horizontal line gives the record by 
hours. Note that progress for the first 4 hours was rapid, then accuracy fell off a 
little until food was taken; then follows another period of 3 hours’ progress. Learn- 
ing was fairly steady and uniform up to the 9th hour. After that apparently no 
further improvement was made. At the end of the 20th hour* the subjects were 
shooting just as inaccurately as they did at the beginning of the test. The food which 
was taken here without rest seemed to bring a slight improvement in the function. 


to interfere with or to interrupt the work—the individuals eating between 
shots. A regular cold meal was served. If the individual usually took 
coffee or tea, he was allowed to take it in this experiment. It can be seen 


174 BEHAVIORISM 


that the average distance from the center of the bull’s eye of the first hour’s 
shooting was nearly 17 inches. Improvement was rapid for the first four 
hours, then the shooting became less efficient during the next two hours. 
Food at the end of the sixth hour seemed to bring a certain improvement 
which continued to the end of the ninth hour. After that, efficiency was 
gradually lost. At the end of the twentieth hour the group was shooting no 
better than at the beginning of the experiment. Learning apparently had 
been either obscured or lost—whether obscured or lost the experimenter 
has not yet determined. 


Just why widely distributed practise does bring better results, only can 
be guessed at, with the facts we now have at hand. We have no real ex- 
planation. Please remember here, though, that if your object were to teach 
individuals to shoot the long bow so as to have warriors as soon as pos- 
sible, you would crowd them with practise as long as practise produced any 
improvement at all. Concentrated practise is wasteful from the standpoint 
of the number of trials required for learning, but sometimes our practical 
needs demand that we adopt this wasteful method, 


The main moral to be drawn from these experiments is that even 
though we have little time at our disposal, still if we use that little time in 
concentrated practise, even over widely spaced time intervals, we can get 
astonishingly good results. 


(3) Exercise of acquired functions :—After practising a given act 
for a sufficient time, the learning curve becomes horizontal. No further 
improvement comes (unless new factors are introduced). Let us call all 
such well learned habits, functions. Suppose you are exercising one of 
these functions day in and day out—for example, typewriting which you 
have been doing for ten years, or doing piece work of one kind or another 
ina factory. Do you do the job faster in the morning, towards noon, after 
lunch, or just before quitting time? Do you do it better on Monday, 
Wednesday or Friday? Better in spring, summer, fall or winter? All of 
these problems have been worked upon but the results do not agree. 


The whole subject of the course of diurnal efficiency, to single out 
just one of the problems, is in quite a muddle. In order to throw some 
light upon this problem, Rosalie Rayner Watson, whose work we cited 
above, took nine subjects whose learning curves on dart throwing had 
been thoroughly practised (daily for more than 2 months) and allowed 
them to throw darts from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. Her results (Table 1) show 
that efficiency in this function and under the conditions of this experiment 
does not vary during the whole of the 12 hours. 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 175 


In this experiment there was considerable rivalry among the partici- 
pants and the stimulating value of the situation was kept high throughout 
the 12 hours. Where there is variation—that is, where efficiency itself de- 
clines at one time of day or another—it is probably due to such things as 
hunger contractions, slight torpidity after lunch and various other easily 
explainable factors. We cannot take time to discuss them now. The facts 
have not been brought out clearly enough yet. 


Table 1 Showing Diurnal Course of Efficiency in a 
Practised Function 


(Figures are given in inches from center of bull’s eye.) 


B .Gich) Grey HH, Ls Ray Rich) Ga Wir Av! 


8- 9 AM—Av. end of ist hr. 6.3}10.3}12.5/11.5)10.2)10.4 


Ne es es | eens 


9-10 AM—Av. end of 2nd hr. | 7.2] 9.5]11.1] 9.9} 9.2)11.6 


|  } | | | | | 


10-11 AM—Av. end of 3rd hr. 7.0)10.2}11.6/11.7] 8.3)12.1 


11-12 AM—Av. end of 4th hr. 8.8] 9.7] 9.6}10.9) 8.9112.3 
12 Noon-1 PM— 


—~r | © nN ~I 
wn Oo on 
oO ‘oO nN 
— 
Ne) 6 (ex) 
Sd EAE 


Av, end of Sth hr. |10.0| 9.7} 9:7|12.7/11.3] 8.4] 8. 8.7 
1- 2 PM—Av. end of 6th hr. | 7.6/11.6| 9.5/10.9/10.0/11.0| 7.7|12.5] 5.51 9.5 
2- 3 PM—Av. end of 7th hr. | 8.8|10.0|10.6/11.4] 8.8|10.8| 6.2113.0| 5.3) 9.4 
3— 4 PM—Av. end of 8th hr. | 6.9| 9.8] 9.6|12.2|10.0|10.4] 5.5112.1] 5.6) 9.1 
4— 5 PM—Av. end of 9thhr. | 7.6(13.3/12.5] 9.8| 8.7/10.2| 5.7111.0| 4.9] 9.3 
5— 6 PM—Av. end of 10th hr. | 9.2(12.3(11.4| 9.9|11.0] 8.9] 5.6|11.7] 5.2h9.5 
6 7 PM—Av. end of 11th hr. | 7.1(11.3| 9.3|16.7|10.3] 9.8] 5.5111.8] 7.4] 9.9 
7- 8 PM—Av. end of 12th hr. | 8.8)... .|10.4115.6| 9.3|10.0] 7.0/11.0| 5.5] 9.7 








(4) Effects of Drugs upon the Exercise of a Function :—In a simi- 
lar way the effect of drugs upon the efficiency of given functions has 
many times been tested. The effects of cocaine, strychnine, alcohol, caf- 
feine, of starvation, cold, heat, oxygen hunger, of castration (upon ani- 


176 BEHAVIORISM 


mals), of administration of thyroxin, adrenalin, testicular extracts and the 
like, have all been tested. It requires a monographic treatment to do all 
this work justice. May I say this in commenting upon it: When the 
function has been practised for a long time, as was true for example, in 
my own work on dart throwing (see record of “W” in Table 1), it is 
surprising how little effect drugs have upon the score. On different 
days I took double doses of strychnine and of cocaine; on another 
day I drank 50 c.c. of rye whisky every two hours for approximately six 
hours; none of these had the slightest effect upon the score. (The score 
when drugs were used is not shown in the above table.) Results ob- 
tained upon other individuals possibly would have been different. Such 
results might not have held true in my own case if some other function 
had been under the test. Of course, when such drugs as strychnine and 
cocaine are taken in unduly large quantities, they must necessarily affect 
all motor coordination. 


The Final Stage in the Formation of Many Habits 


After a habit has been set up by reacting to visual, auditory, tactual 
and other stimuli, such as we have described above, an additional factor 
enters in. As we exercise the habit continually, the actual visual, auditory, 
olfactory and tactual stimuli become of less and less importance. When 
habits are thoroughly ingrained, we can execute many of them blindfolded 
and with our ears and noses plugged up and our skin covered with cloth. 
In other words, visual, auditory, olfactory and tactual stimuli no longer 
have to be placed at turning points. What has happened? A second stage 
of conditioning has taken place. In the early stages of the learning pro- 
cess, each time the visual stimulus is given us we make a muscular re- 
sponse (with our striped muscles) to that visual stimulus. In a very 
short time the muscular response itself can serve as a stimulus to set off 
the next motor response in order, and then the next motor response can 
set off the succeeding motor response, so that thereafter complicated mazes 
can be run, complicated acts of various kinds can be accomplished without 
the presence of visual, auditory, olfactory and tactual stimuli. The mus- 
cular stimult coming from the movements of the muscles themselves are 
all we need to keep our manual responses occurring in proper sequence 
To understand this process thoroughly, you should recall what I told you 
about the muscles being not only responding organs but sense organs as 
well. We can diagram this double conditioning as follows: 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 177 


After the individual is conditioned to respond to the sight of the circle 
thus : 


Gey ery ete mee meer Nias SNe CE (aan (Gy 
(1st order) Visual (circle) Two steps to right (or any other 
Then muscular response called for by 
(after further conditioning) habit series) 
Movement of muscle itself. Can call out the identical response. 


This is often called a kinaesthetic or “muscular” habit. Our internal lang- 
uage habits (thought) are very good examples of such habits. There 
seems to be a strong tendency for all of our habits to reach this second 
stage which we may call kinaesthetic. This process represents no mysteri- 
ous vitalistic energy-saving function on the part of the organism. It is ex- 
a what you would expect from the law of the formation of conditioned 
reflexes, 


Has the Behaviorist Any Memory 


The behaviorist never uses the term “memory.” He believes that it 
has no place in an objective psychology. This state of affairs seems to 
worry a good many psychologists and all of the general public who at~ 
tempt to read behavioristic writings. 


Let us see how we come out when we appeal to the facts. Let us 
start with an animal lower in the scale than the human—with the white 
rat, for example. I have in front of me the record of a rat’s learning of 
the maze. It took this particular rat 40 minutes, on his first trip, to get to 
the food in the center of the maze. He made almost every error that it 
is possible to make in the maze—that is, he retraced his steps many times 
and ran into all the blind alleys again and again. On his 7th trial he got 
to the food in 4 minutes and made only 8 errors. On his 20th trial he 
reached the food in 2 minutes and made only 6 errors. On his 30th trip 
he reached the food in 10 seconds and made no errors. On his 35th trip 
and on practically every trip thereafter for 150 trips, he reached the food 
in about 6 seconds and made no errors. From the 35th trip on, he ran the 
maze like a beautiful machine. No further work in the maze improved 
his record. Learning was complete. He had reached his limit in speed. 


Suppose we keep the rat away from the maze for six months. Does 
he have any memory of it? Let us not speculate. Let us try him out. We 
arrange everything as it was on his last trip. To our astonishment we find 
that he gets to the food in just 2 minutes and makes only 6 errors. In 


178 BEHAVIORISM 


other words, the habit of running the maze was largely retained. A part 
of the organization was gone, but even at the end of 6 months without 
practise his initial relearning record was as good as was the record of his 
20th trial in the original learning series. 


Let us next look at the record of a Rhesus monkey learning to open 
a complicated problem box. It took him 20 minutes to open it the first 
time. On the 20th trial, 20 days later, it took him only 2 seconds to open 
it. We gave him no further practise for 6 months, then we tried him 
again. He opened it in 4 seconds with barely a fumble. 


Are things different with the human child? The year-old child crawls 
to his father, gurgles and coos and pulls at his legs. He will come to his 
father if a dozen people are in the room. Now send him off for two 
months and surround him with other people. Try him again with his 
father. He no longer crawls (or walks) to his father but goes to the per- 
son who fed and cared for him during the two months interval (much to 
the chagrin of the father if it happens to be his first-born and only boy). 
His habit of reacting positively to his father has been lost. 


Let us take the three-year-old boy and let him learn to ride his scooter 
and tricycle until they are skillfully handled. Put them away for six 
months and test him again. He dashes off on either with little loss in skill. 


Finally, take a youth of twenty and let him learn to play golf. Keep 
a record of his slow, laborious progress in mastering the game. In two 
years, with twice weekly practise, he will get his score down to 80 or to an 
occasional 78 on an 18-hole course. Take him away from golf for three 
years and try him again. He will probably make a 95 on his first round. 
In two weeks he will again be making his 80. 


Putting all of our various facts together, we find that after a manual 
act has been learned and then put aside for a definite period of disuse or 
no practise—some loss in the efficiency of the habit occurs, but usually 
(except for the baby in our illustration, for instance) the loss is not total. 
Tf the period of disuse is long enough, a total loss can occur in any habit. 
The amount of loss in a given habit varies in different individuals. Again, 
the same individual will show a different rate of loss for different types of 
habit. 


It is astonishing, however, how little loss there is in most of our man- 
ual habits during relatively long periods of disuse; e. g. swimming, box- 
ing, shooting, skating, dancing, golf and the like. If a poor shot or an 
inexpert golfer tells you that he was good five years ago but that lack of 


OUR MANUAL HABITS 179 


practise has made him poor, don’t believe him; he never was good! In 
general, if we keep a record of an individual’s learning and compare it with 
his relearning record, we can always measure accurately the loss during 
any given period of disuse. 


_ But to come back to the question of our need for the term “memory” 
in psychology: the behaviorist if he were speaking scientifically, would 
never say, “Does James remember how to ride his bicycle after all these 
years of no practise?’ He would say, rather, “How accurately can James 
ride his bicycle now that he hasn’t touched it in five years?” He doesn’t 
ask James to introspect and tell him. He proceeds to give James his bi- 
cycle and then to measure the time for riding six blocks, to record the num- 
ber of falls, and the like. At the end of the test he will say, “James rides 
his bicycle 75% as well as he rode it five years ago.” In other words, to 
find out how much has been retained and how much has been lost, the be- 
haviorist has only to put the individual into the old situation, after a period 
of no practise, and watch what happens. If James in the above situation 
rode no better than he did the first day he got his bicycle, the behaviorist 
would say, “James has lost the habit of riding a bicycle.” 


This applies to every form of organization the human being puts on. 
It is surprising how well even the simple conditioned reflexes are retained 
by both humans and lower animals. In the laboratory I have been able to 
re-establish a conditioned reflex to a bell (R=withdrawal of finger) after 
only one punishment with the electric current, following a year of no prac: 
tise. G. V. Anrep speaks of a similar retention in the case of his dog after 
a year of no practise (tonal stimulus with a conditioned salivary response). 


So, instead of speaking of memory, the behaviorist speaks of the re- 
tention of a given habit in terms of how much skill has been retained and 
how much has been lost in the period of no practise. We do not need the 
term “memory,” shot through as it is with all kinds of philosophical and 
subjective connotations. 


This treatment of memory is not complete because we have not yet 
discussed word and language habits and their retention. The next lecture 
concerns itself with the formation and retention of our verbal habits. 


Xx 
TALKING AND THINKING 


Which, When Rightly Understood, Go Far In 
Breaking Down the Fiction That There Is 
Any Such Thing As ‘Mental’ Life 


Introduction:—In my last lecture I brought out the fact that man, 
although born more helpless almost than any other mammal, very quickly 
learns to outstrip other animals by reason of the manual habits he acquires. 
He can never learn how to run fast enough to win in a foot race with the 
greyhound or the deer, he can never learn how to compete in sheer strength 
with the horse or the elephant, yet he masters all of them. He does it by 
learning how to construct and how to use manual devices. First he learns 
to use a club and then to throw stones—later he learns to use the sling so 
that he can throw stones with greater force. Then he constructs sharp 
stone instruments. Next he fashions and uses the bow and the arrow 
with which he can conquer even the fleetest of animals; then he learns 
how to start a fire. Next he learns how to make bronze and iron knives, 
then the cross bow and finally firearms. His mastery of the world is made 
complete. 


But with all the delicacy of his manipulative skill, man is not the ex- 
clusive possessor even of acquired manual dexterity. The elephant can be 
trained to load and unload heavy trucks of lumber. Even the lower types 
of monkeys can be trained to manipulate delicate latches, pull strings and 
the like. The chimpanzee learns to ride the bicycle with grace, to weave 
his way on it in and out among a dozen bottles standing in a row without 
touching one; to uncork and drink from a bottle, smoke a pipe, light a 
cigarette, to lock and unlock doors and to do many hundreds of other 
things. When he stands up and manipulates his world of objects with a 
cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, he looks wonderfully like the 
usual caricature of the Irish hod carrier. 


In this lecture we take up one great field of learned activities which 
the brute cannot even enter, much less compete in. This is the field of 
language habits—habits which when exercised implicitly behind the closed 
doors of the lips we call thinking.’ 


1 We will defer until later the question whether the man who cannot talk, cannot think. When 
we have made our elementary presentation complete, you will find that man both talks and 
thinks with his whole body—just as he does everything else with his whole body. We 
will discuss this more completely in the next lecture. 


180 


TALKING AND THINKING 181 


What 1s Language? 


Language as we ordinarily understand it, in spite of its complexities, 
is in the beginning a very simple type of behavior. It is really a manipu- 
lative habit. Down in the throat at the level of the Adam’s apple. we have 
a simple little instrument called the larynx or “voice box.” It is a tube 
made up largely of cartilage across which two very simple membranes are 
stretched (membranous glottis), the edges of which form the vocal cords. 
Instead of manipulating this quite primitive instrument with our hands, 
we manipulate it with its attached muscles as we expel the air from ouv 
lungs. When you think of it, try to think of some simple reed instrument 
which we hold between our lips and blow air through. We tighten the 
vocal cords, change the width of the opening between them much as we 
tune the strings of a violin by turning the pegs. The air is expelled from 
the lungs through the opening between the vocal cords. This causes them 
to vibrate and to give out a sound. We call this the voice. But as we 
make this sound another group of muscles changes the shape of the throat, 
still another set changes the position of the tongue, another the position 
of the teeth, and still another the position of the lips. The mouth cavity 
above the larynx and the visceral cavities: below constantly alter in size 
and in shape so as to change the volume of the sound, the character of 
the sound (timbre), and the pitch of the sound. All of these responses 
are called into action the first time the baby cries. They are called into 
action again when he makes his unlearned sounds such as “da” or “ma.” 


The picture is then not very different from the one we saw in studying 
the movements of hands and fingers, is it? 


Early Vocal Sounds 


You will recall, too, from the last lecture that in order to begin to 
build in manipulative habits we have to have something to start on, namely 
the unlearned movements of fingers, hands, toes and the like. In language 
we have something similar to start on, namely the unlearned vocal sounds 
the infant makes at birth and afterwards. From the first moment such 
sounds as “a, “u,’ “nah,” “wah,” “wuh”’ appear, then later  ‘‘la}’’ 
Vai Dene eiete Wit aiid " “da, ” Mrs. Blanton from her experience in 
a nursery of 25 “during the first month of infancy, says, “Of interest was 
the variety of animal cries simulated in the nursery. The ‘pot-rack’ of the 
quail, the cry of the goat, the whine of the young pig, and the wail of the 
wild cat, each had a close imitation,” 


182 BEHAVIORISM 


Beginning of Word Organization 


In sttidying manual activity we found that the habit of reaching begins 
about the 120th day; that by the 150th day, under proper training, it is 
fairly well developed. The first true vocal habit starts at a much later age 
and develops more slowly. In some children we find no verbal habits of 
the conventional kind even at 18 months of age. In some we find quite a 
few at the end of the first year. 


My wife and I attempted to form a simple verbal habit in a very 
young infant. The experiments were carried out upon B—the infant 
whose jealous behavior we have already taken up. He was born November 
21st, 1921. Up to the end of the 5th month he showed merely the reper- 
toire of almost every other child of that age. The cooing sounds, “ah goo” 
and variations of “a” and “ah” were quite pronounced. We began on the 
12th of May to tie this sound up to the bottle (this infant was bottle-fed 
from the end of the second month). Our method was as follows: We 
gave him the bottle and allowed him to nurse for a moment, then we took 
it away and held it in front of him. He began to kick and squirm and 
reach for it. We next gave the stimulus sound “da” aloud. We repeated 
this procedure once per day for three weeks. When he began to whimper 
and whine we always gave him the bottle. On June 5th, 1922, he said the 
word ‘“‘dada” when we gave the stimulus word and held the bottle in front 
of him. The bottle was immediately given him. This procedure was 
repeated three times with success on that occasion—each time we gave the 
stimulus word. Then we took the bottle away five successive times and 
without our giving the stimulus word he said “dada” for the bottle. At 
one of the trials he kept on saying ‘“‘da da,” “da da,” “da da,” several 
times without our giving the stimulus word. Thereafter for several weeks 
it was as easy to touch off this response as to call out any other bodily 
reflex. The verbal response was confined almost exclusively to this one 
stimulus. On a few ocasions he said it when his rabbit was held in front 
of him but not when other things were shown him. 


It was very interesting to note that on June 23rd he got his mouth 
set on other types of sound, such as “‘boo-boo” and “bla-bla” and “goo- 
goo” (newly appearing unlearned sounds). On this occasion he could not 
reset for “dada.” He would splutter out these other sounds valiantly and 
in a string but never once got out “dada.” On the following day ‘“‘dada” 
appeared again without the slightest difficulty. On July 1st the “dada” 
sound was changed suddenly without any stimulus word being given to 
“dad-en” with the old “dada” appearing once in awhile. I think it is quite 
probable that if we had been willing to break up the infant’s strict feeding 


TALKING AND THINKING 183 


habits and had watched for the verbal occasions on which he himself made 
the sound “dada” and had given him the bottle immediately, on each such 
occasion, then he would have formed this habit much earlier and much 
more quickly. I think it is quite debatable whether our speaking aloud the 
stimulus word “dada” had the slightest effect in calling out this response 
on the favorable occasion it did appear when we started to feed him. In 
other words, I doubt that there was any verbal imitation at this early age. 
Later on, of course, such so-called verbal imitation does appear but most 
of it is more a matter of our imitating the child than the child imitating 
us. Once these sound responses have been conditioned, naturally the whole 
of language may be looked upon as being ‘imitative’ since socially the 
spoken word of one individual is the stimulus touching off the same or 
another verbal response in another individual. 


Thus at the end of 6% months we established a conditioned vocal 
response corresponding roughly, let us say, to the reaching habit which is 
fairly well perfected at the end of the 150th day. 


The Further Development of Language 


After conditioned word responses have become partly established, 
phrase and sentence habits begin to form. Naturally single word condi- 
tioning does not stop. All types of word, phrase and sentence habits thus 
develop simultaneously. 


When B, whose word conditioning we have just considered, had 52 
words at his command? we noticed the first putting together of two words. 
This occurred on August 13th, 1923, at the age of 1 year, 7 months, 25 
days. For a month prior to that date we had been setting a verbal pattern 
of two words for some time, suchas “hello, mama,” “‘hello, dada,” without 
results. On this day his mother said, “Say goodbye to daddy.” She set 
the pattern, “goodbye da.” He repeated after her, “bye’”—then hesitation 
and five seconds later came the word, “da.” This brought upon him a 
shower of petting, verbal commendation and the like. Later in the day 
he said with the same long interval between the two sounds, “bye—bow 
wow.” On August 15th, two days later, we got him to say “hello—mama,” 
“hello—Rose,” “ta-ta—Rose,” “ta-ta—mama” (“‘ta-ta” means “thank 


1 The full list of his words is as follows: Ta-ta (thank you), Blea (please), Mama, Da, Roe 
(Rose), No-No (Nora—disappeared when maid left), Yea (yes), No, Bow-Wow, Melow 
(miow), Anna, Gigon (Dickey), Doan (Joan), Bébé (baby), Ja (Jack), Puddy (pretty), 
Co-Co (bird), Archa (Archer), Tick (stick), Tone (stone), Dir (dirt), Sha (shame). 
Toa (toast), Cra-ca (cracker), Chee (cheese), Nanny (candy), Abba (Albert), Bleu (blue), 
More, Moe (water), Boa (boat), Go-Go ie aba ae Awri et ht), Te-te (pee pee}. 
Shan (sand), Sha- Sha ¢Sarays La-La (lady), Gir (girl), Maa aianyd Choo - Choo (train), 
Ball, Baa (Box or bottle), Haa (hot), Co (cold), Sow Se Plower (flower), How-do 
(how do you do—new Aug. 14), Boo (book), Shee (see), Hello, Bye-Bye, Shoe. 


184 BEHAVIORISM 


you”). In each case the two word stimulus had to be given before the 
response could be called out. He also said, “blea—mama’’ for the first 
time. Never up to this time could we get the two word response without 
giving the two word stimulus. On August 24th he put two words together 
without any verbal stimulus from the parents, for example, he pointed to 
his father’s shoe and said “shoe—da,” and pointing to his mother’ shoe, 
“shoe—ma.” Then the next four days he used all of the above two word 
responses at one time or another without any pattern being set, and some 
additional ones for which a two word pattern had never been set, such as 
the following: “tee-tee bow-wow (dog urinates), “bébé go-go” (when a 
little neighbor took his cart), ‘mama toa,” ‘“‘howdo shoes,” “haa mama,” 
“awri mama.” Often when put back into his room for his sleep or his 
midday nap, he ran over these words and combinations again and again 
aloud in his room—an observation which has considerable importance in 
the behaviorist’s theory of thinking as we shall see later. 


From this time on development in the two-word stage took place 
rapidly. The three-word stage was somewhat slow in coming as was talk- 
ing in sentences corresponding to the ordinary adult social patterns. No 
new facts, however, seemed to come to light during these stages. 


At three years of age this child has a remarkable command of lan- 
guage, although nothing has been done to force it. At one year of age he 
had only 12 words which is about the average number for one year olds. 
At 18 months B with his 52 words was distinctly behind the average, a 
condition which often occurs when a child is constantly attended by a 
nurse who waits upon it hand and foot—and in this case a French woman 
who used scarcely a larger number of English words than the child used. 
I mention these facts to bring out the point that many factors play a réle 
in the speed at which word, phrase and sentence habits form, 


Words Are But Substitutes for Objects and Situations 


You can see from this example of the formation of single and double 
word habits that the process is entirely analogous to that of the establish- 
ment of simple conditioned motor reflexes such as the withdrawal of the 
hand upon the presentation of an auditory or visual stimulus. We may 
again employ our old familiar formula 


SS PMRW ir nd ce ROMAN EIT R 

Some intraorganic stimulus Dada 
When conditioned— 

then i. 


Sight of bottle 


TALKING AND THINKING 185 


The unconditioned or unlearned stimulus is some change in the muscular 
and glandular tissues of the throat, chest and mouth regions (of course 
changes in this region in turn may have been brought about by stimulation 
from the stomach or from the external environment, etc.). The unlearned 
response is the vocal utterance we call “dada”—in other words here, as in 
manual activity, we have the unlearned and unconditioned responses to 
start building upon. We watch our chances and build upon these. Word 
conditioning in this early stage is pretty harum scarum because we know 
so little about the fundamental stimuli calling out the repertoire of un- 
learned vocal responses. Indeed we know more about the stimuli calling 
out the unlearned responses of animals than we do in babies. I know how 
to make a frog croak by rubbing a certain spot on its body. I can make 
a dog bark, or a monkey give out a certain sound. I do not know how 
to “press that button” on his body, be it inside or out, which will make a 
baby say “da,” “glub,” “boo-boo” or “aw.” If I did, I could build in words 
and phrases and sentences at an early date and very, very rapidly. In the 
case of the human young we just have to watch for a sound which is near- 
est some conventional word and try to tie it up to the object (make it sub- 
stitutible for the object) that calls out that word in the adult. In other 
words, we begin to attempt to bring him into verbal conformity with his 
group at even this early age. Sometimes we have to condition syllable by 
syllable in order to get a complete word, that is, in a long word there may 
be a dozen separate conditioned responses. A long word would thus corres- 
pond to the picture I drew for you in my last lecture of the learning of the 
maze. But even so, it is my belief that in the unlearned sounds made by 
the infant we have all the units of response which when later brought 
together (by conditioning) are the words of our dictionaries. Thus all the 
sounds that the distinguished, eloquent and facile lecturer makes in his 
impassioned address are but his unlearned infantile sounds put together by 
patient conditioning in infancy, childhood and youth, 


One thing seems quite obvious in the formation of verbal habits and 
that is that conditioned reflexes of the second, third and succeeding orders 
are formed with very great rapidity. It is quite obvious in the child of 
three that the word “mama” is called out (1) by the sight of the mother, 
(2) by the photograph of the mother, (3) by the sound of her voice, (4) 
by the sound of her footsteps, (5) by the sight of the printed English 
word “mother,” (6) by the sight of the written English word “mother,” 
(7) by the sight of the printed French word mére, (8) by the sight of the 
written French word mére, and by several other stimuli such as the visual 
stimulus of her hat, her clothes, her shoes, etc. While these substitute 
stimuli are being set up, the response “mama” itself becomes elaborated. 


186 BEHAVIORISM 


Sometimes he screams it at the top of his voice, sometimes he speaks it 
in an ordinary conversational tone, sometimes in a whining tone, some- 
times down deep in his throat, sometimes softly, sometimes harshly. Set 
verbal patterns for him to imitate and he can say “mama” in many differ- 
ent ways. This means that the response “mama” is made with dozens 
and possibly even with hundreds of different muscular sets. 


In other words, in bringing children up in our own verbal footsteps 
we verbally condition them as we were conditioned both as to the words 
themselves (English, French, German, etc.), and as to their pronunciation 
and inflexion. We can spot a Southern child by the way it says “store” 
or “door” and by several phrases such as “you-all,’ “may I carry you 
home,” by a certain softness and a certain slowness in speech. We 
can spot a Chicago child by the way it says one word, “‘water.” We can 
spot the East Side newsboy of New York by the harshness of his high 
pitched voice, and by the types of words he uses. We not only learn our 
parents’ language—we learn their tricks of language as well. These differ- 
ences between north and south, east and west, between the Latin or Oriental 
and the negro or the Saxon are not due to differences in throat formation 
or in the numbers and types of the elementary unlearned infantile response 
units. Many northern mothers and fathers went south in “carpet bagging” 
times and their children learned to speak Southern and not New England 
English. Certainly children of French parents put on perfect English 
when brought to this country and reared by English people. 


It is difficult to learn to speak a foreign language without accent if 
we start to learn that language late in life for the very same reason that a 
40-year-old blacksmith can never learn toe dancing. Habitual types of 
response rob the organism of its muscular flexibility—they tend to shape 
the actual structures of the body. A person always despondent, always 
with drooping facial muscles, tends to take on that facial set that we char- 
acterize as gloomy, despondent, kill-joy. Another important factor comes 
in at this point, too. The larynx begins to change structurally in adoles- 
cence. It actually becomes less flexible, less capable of being shaped to 
utter new sounds. 


As the child grows up then, it establishes a conditioned word response 
for every object and situation in its external environment. Society in the 
form of parent and teacher and other members of the social group arranges 
this. But strange as it may seem at first sight, it does not have to be word 
conditioned to many, many objects in its internal environment—to changes 
in the viscera themselves—because parents and the other members of the 
social group haven’t any words for them. Visceral happenings are at 
present largely unverbalized even in the human race. The significance of 


TALKING AND THINKING 187 


this as an explanation for the so-called ‘unconscious’ I shall bring out in 
the next lecture. 


The Bodily Economy of Having Word Substitutes for Objects 


The fact that every object and situation in the external environment 
is named is of vast importance. Words not only can and do call out other 
words, phrases and sentences, but when the human being is properly or- 
ganized they can call out all of his manual activity. The words function 
in the matter of calling out responses exactly as did the objects for which 
the words serve as substitutes. Wasn’t it Dean Swift who had one of his 
characters who couldn’t or wouldn’t speak carry around in a bag all the 
objects of common use so that instead of having to say words to influence 
the behavior of others, he pulled out the actual object from his bag and 
showed it? The world would be in this situation today if we did not have 
this equivalence for reaction between objects and words. You get some- 
thing of the helpless state humanity would be in unless we had this equiva- 
lence, in your own household when you by chance employ a Roumanian 
nurse, a German cook and a French butler and you yourself speak only 
English. 


Think what it means in the economy of time and the ability to call 
out cooperation from, groups to have word substitutes for objects common 
to all members. 


Soon the human has a verbal substitute within himself theoretically 
for every object in the world. Thereafter he carries the world around with 
him by means of this organization. And he can manipulate this word 
world in the privacy of his room or when he lies down in his bed in the 
dark. Many of our discoveries come largely through this ability to ma- 
nipulate a world of objects not actually present to our senses. Don’t make 
the mistake that used to be made about “memory’’—that “memories” are 
crowded inside a theoretical mind like proverbial jacks in the box ready to 
spring up even without a stimulus. We carry this world around with us 
as actual bodily organization, in the muscular and glandular organization 
of our throat, chest, etc. (including, of course, the sense organs in the 
muscles and the nervous system). That organization is ready to function 
day and night whenever the appropriate stimulus is given. What is this 
appropriate stimulus? 


The Final Stage in Our Word Organization (Kinaesthetic) 


It is clear to you now that word habits are built up like manual habits. 
You will recall that I pointed out to you (p. 176) that once a series of re- 


188 BEHAVIORISM 


sponses (manual habits) is organized around a series of objects, we can 
run through the whole series of responses without having the original 
series of objects present. In other words, when you are first learning to 
pick out the air of “Yankee Doodle” on the piano with one finger from the 
printed score, you first look at the score and see note G, then you strike it; 
then you see note A and strike it; then note B and strike it, etc. Your 
notes are a series of visual stimuli, your responses are organized accord- 
ing to this series. But when you have practiced a short time, some one 
can remove the score and you can go right on. You can even go to the 
piano at night, if some one asks you to (in this case the spoken word of 
a friend is the initial stimulus that starts the process going) and hammer 
it out without a falter. You know how to explain this—you know that 
the first muscular response you make—the first key you strike in beginning 
to play the melody, substitutes for the visual stimulus of the second note. 
Muscular stimuli (kinaesthetic) now serve in place of visual stimuli and 
the whole process goes on as smoothly as before. I brought all this out 
in an early lecture so that this explanation should be a fixed habit by now! 


Now exactly the same thing happens in word behavior. Suppose you 
read from your little book (your mother usually sets an auditory pattern), 
“Now—I—lay—me—down—to—sleep.” The sight of “now” brings the 
saying of “now” (response 1), the sight of “I,” response of saying “I” 
(response 2) and so on throughout the series. Soon the mere saying of 
“now” becomes the motor (kinaesthetic) stimulus for saying “I,” etc.* 
This explains why we can shut off the world of stimuli and talk glibly 
about sights and sounds in distant places or about things that happened 
years ago. A chance word from a bystander, or a question of a friend, 
or even the sights and sounds in front of you may touch off this old verbal 
organization. But you say this is “memory.” 


“Memory,” or the Retention of Verbal Habits 


What the man on the street ordinarily means by an exhibition of mem- 
ory is what occurs in some such situation as this: An old friend comes to 
see him, after many years’ absence. The moment he sees this friend, he 
says: “Upon my life! Addison Sims of Seattle! I haven’t seen you since the 
World’s Fair in Chicago. Do you remember the gay parties we used to 
have in the old Windermere Hotel? Do you remember the Midway? 
Do you remember ,’ etc., ad infinitum. The psychology of this process 
is so simple that it seems almost an insult to your intelligence to discuss 





1 In the next lecture we will diagram this whole process. 


TALKING AND THINKING 189 


it, and yet a good many of the behaviorists’ kindly critics have said that 
behaviorism cannot adequately explain memory. Let us see if this is a fact. 


When the man on the street originally made the acquaintance of Mr. 
Sims, he saw him and was told his name at the same time. Possibly he 
did not see him again until a week or two later. He had to be re-intro- 
duced. Again, when he saw Mr. Sims he heard his name. Then, shortly 
afterwards, the two men became friends and saw one another every day 
and became really acquainted—that is, formed verbal and manual habits 
towards one another and towards the same or similar situations. In other 
words, the man on the street became completely organized to react in many 
habit ways to Mr. Addison Sims. Finally, just the sight of the man, even 
after months of absence, would call out not only the old verbal habits, but 
many other types of bodily and visceral responses. 


Now, when Mr. Sims came into the room, the man on the street 
might have rushed to him and showed every evidence of “memory,” but 
when he got to him he might have stumbled over his name. If so, he 
would have had to fall back on the old alibi, “Your face is familiar but I 
can’t quite get back your name.” What happens here is that the old man- 
ual and visceral organizations have persisted (handshaking, noisy welcome, 
slapping on the shoulder, etc.), but the verbal organization is partially if 
not wholly gone. One overt repetition of the verbal stimulus (the sound 
of the name) would re-establish the whole of the old habit. 


But Mr. Sims may have stayed away so long, or our original acquaint- 
ance with him (period of practice) may have been so slight that, after an 
absence of ten years, the whole organization may have been lost—manual, 
visceral and verbal (all three are necessary to a complete reaction). In 
your terminology, you would have completely “forgotten” Mr. Addison 
Sims. 


In the course of our lives we are daily being organized in this way 
by the people we meet, by the books we read and study, and by the events 
that happen to us. Sometimes the organization is incidental and casual; 
sometimes it is drilled into us by teachers, as in the case of the multiplica- 
tion tables, facts of history, stanzas of poetry and the like. In learn- 
ing, sometimes the organization is predominantly manual (which we 
studied in the last lecture), sometimes largely verbal (e, g., the multiplica- 


1 Indeed you don’t need even the visual (or other sense organ) stimulus of Mr. Sims to start 
verbal processes (‘memory’) going about that gentleman. Some one may, in the course 
of a business conversation ask you about the type of people living in Seattle. This may 
start off a whole chain of verbal organization about the names of people living there. 
Almost inevitably Mr. Sims’ name will come up in its turn. 


190 BEHAVIORISM 


tion tables), sometimes largely visceral; usually it is a combination of all 
three. This organization is constantly renewed and strengthened, as long 
as the stimulus is present daily (or frequently) ; but when the stimulus has 
been long removed (period of no practice), the organization disintegrates 
(retention becomes imperfect). When, after absence, the stimulus is pre- 
sented once more, the responses involving the old manual habits appear 
along with the name (laryngeal habits) and the smiling, laughter, etc. 
(visceral habits), and the response is complete—“memory”’ is intact. Any 
part of this total organization may be totally or partially absent. What 
James means, behavioristically, when he says that a feeling of warmth and 
intimacy clings around true memory, is that there has been a retention of 
the visceral organization as well as of the laryngeal and manual organiza- 
tions. 


By “memory,” then, we mean nothing except the fact that when we 
meet a stimulus again after an absence, we do the old habitual thing (say 
the old words and show the old visceral—emotional—behavior) that we 
learned to do when we were in the presence of that stimulus in the first 
place. 


If I had the time and you had the patience, I would take you over the 
field of verbal learning and ‘forgetting’ and show you how the two are 
related. I would take up with you the effect of distribution of practice, 
the experiments upon the diurnal course of efficiency in “memory” func- 
tions, the so-called “fatigue” (or rather the almost lack of it) in the 
exercise of a memory function.1 There are many thousands of experi- 
ments in this chapter of psychology. Some of this chapter is interesting; 
less of it is valuable. I have given you enough of the behaviorists’ point 
of view, though, for you to be able safely to read about these experiments 
for yourself without danger of losing yourself in the introspective reports 
which accompany them. 


One further point should be mentioned. When a series of words or 
nonsense syllables is learned, loss in retention is at first very rapid indeed. 
This is quite in contrast to the facts I brought out about manual learning. 
After the first rapid initial loss, however, the loss takes place much more 
slowly. 


What 1s Thinking? 
You may agree with all I have had to say above. You may even have 
wondered why I have spent so much time in talking about things which 


1 These are all sometimes called, mental functions—as for example fatigue in a mental function 
as contrasted with fatigue in a manual function. Almost wherever the introspectionist and 
so-called functionalist use the term mental, we use the natural science term verbal, 


TALKING AND THINKING 19] 


are obvious to everyone. I did it because I wanted to give you a back- 
ground to clear away any misunderstanding about the nature of thought. 


Before trying to understand this theory of thinking which I am now 
about to propound, won’t you please pick up any of your present psycho- 
logical texts and read the chapter on thinking? Won't you then try to 
digest some of the pabulum the philosophers have offered us on this all- 
important function? I have tried to understand it. I had to give it up. I 
believe you will give it up too. But until you have read their explanations, 
don’t quarrel with the behaviorist for weaknesses in his presentation. His 
own theory is quite simple. The only difficulty about it lies in your pre- 
vious organization. You begin to resist it, to show negative reactions, the 
moment you hear about it. You have been trained both at your 
mother’s knee and in psychological laboratories to say that thinking 
is something peculiarly uncorporeal, something very intangible, very evan- 
escent, something peculiarly mental. To the behaviorist this resistance 1s 
due to the reluctance of the psychologists to give up the teaching of 
religion in their psychology. Thinking, on account of the concealed nature 
of the musculature with which it is done, has always been inaccessible to 
unaided observation and to direct experimentation. And there is always 
a strong inclination to attach a mystery to something you can’t see. As 
new scientific facts are discovered we have fewer and fewer phenomena 
which cannot be observed, hence fewer and fewer pegs upon which to hang 
our folk-lore. The behaviorist advances a natural science theory about 
thinking which makes it just as simple, and just as much a part of biolog- 
ical processes, as tennis playing. 


The Behaviorist’s View of Thought 


The behaviorist advances the view that what the psychologists have 
hitherto called thought ts in short nothing but talking to ourselves. The 
evidence for this view is admittedly largely theoretical but it is the one 
theory so far advanced which explains thought in terms of natural science. 
I wish here expressly to affirm that in developing this view I have never | 
believed that the laryngeal movements (see page 181) as such played the | 
predominating role in thought. I admit that in my former presentations 
I have, in order to gain pedagogical simplicity, expressed myself in ways 
which can be so interpreted. We have all had the proofs before us time 
and again that the larynx can be removed without completely destroying a 
person’s ability to think. Removal of the larynx does destroy articulate 
speech but it does not destroy whispered speech. Whispered speech (with- 
out articulation) depends upon muscular responses of the cheek, tongue, 


192 BEHAVIORISM 


throat and chest—organization which, to be sure, has been built up with 
the use of the larynx, but which remains ready to function after the larynx 
has been removed. Anyone who has read my various presentations knows 
that I have tried everywhere to emphasize the enormous complexity of the 
musculature in the throat and chest. To claim that a mass of cartilage such 
as that composing the larynx is responsible for thought (internal speech) 
is like saying that the bone and cartilage that make up the elbow joint form 
the chief organ with which one plays. tennis. 


My theory does hold that the muscular habits learned in overt speech 
are responsible for implicit or internal speech (thought). It holds, too, 
that there are hundreds of muscular combinations with which one can say 
either aloud or to himself almost any word, so rich and so flexible is 
language organization and so varied are our overt speech habits. A good 
imitator, as you already know, can say the same phrases in dozens of differ- 
ent ways, in a bass voice, in a tenor voice, in a mezzo, in a soprano, ina 
loud whisper, in a soft whisper, as an English cockney would say them, 
as a broken-English-speaking Frenchman would say them, as a Southerner 
would say them, as a child, etc. The number and variety of habits we 
form in the speaking of almost every word is thus well nigh legion. We 
use speech, from infancy on, a thousand times to using our hands once. 
From this circumstance there grows up a complexity of organization which 
even the psychologist seemingly cannot grasp. Again, after our overt 
speech habits are formed, we are constantly talking to ourselves (thought). 
New combinations occur, new complexities arise, new substitutions take 
place—for example, where the shrug of the shoulders or the movement 
of any other bodily part becomes substituted for a word. Soon any, and 
every bodily response may become a word substitute (see p. 187). 


The alternative sometimes advanced to this theory is that so-called 
central processes may take place in the brain so faintly that no neural — 
impulse passes out over the motor nerve to the muscle, hence no response 
takes place in the muscles and glands. Even Lashley and his students, on 
account of their strong interest in the nervous system, seem to hold this 
view. Recently Agnes M. Thorson’ has found that tongue movements are 
not universally present in internal speech. ‘This, even if true, can have no 


1 The Relation of Tongue Movements to Internal Speech, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 
1925. Her experiments are very inconclusive. Tongue movements were recorded by a 
compound system of delicate levers. Her setup could probably be depended upon for 
positive results, but the method was too inexact to serve as a basis for negative conclu- 
sions. No instrument less sensitive than the string galvanometer can be depended upon 
for negative results. Her saying that because she could find by the use of this method 
no correlation between tongue movements and internal speech, therefore “this leaves only 
the hypothesis that the activities are intra- neural, and do not necessarily involve complete 
motor expression at each stage of the process’’~-is in need of modification. 


TALKING AND THINKING aba 


bearing upon the present view. The tongue, while bearing very delicate 
receptors, is on the muscular side a bulk organ for rolling our food around. 
It plays a part in internal speech to be sure, but probably about the same 
part that the fist of the jazz cornet player plays when he thrusts it into the 
horn to modify the sound. 


Some Positive Evidence for the Behaviorist’s View 


(1) Our main line of evidence comes from watching the child’s 
behavior. The child talks incessantly when alone, as I pointed out a 
moment ago (p. 184). At three he even plans the day aloud, as my own 
ear placed outside the keyhole of the nursery door has very often con- 
firmed. Aloud he voices (may I use literary terms and not psychological 
ones?) his wishes, his hopes, his fears, his annoyances, his dissatisfactions 
with his nurse or his father. Soon society in the form of nurse and par- 
ents steps in. “Don’t talk aloud—daddy and mother are not always talking 
to themselves.”’ Soon the overt speech dies down to whispered speech and 
a good lip reader can still read what the child thinks of the world and of 
himself. Some individuals never even make this concession to society. 
When alone they talk aloud to themselves. A still larger number never 
go beyond even the whispering stage when alone. Watch people reading 
on the street car; peep through the keyhole some time when individuals 
not too highly socialized are just sitting and thinking. But the great 
majority of people pass on to the third stage under the influence of social 
pressure constantly exerted. “Quit whispering to yourself,” and “Can’t you 
even read without moving your lips?” and the like are constant mandates. 
Soon the process is forced to take place behind the lips. Behind these walls 
you can call the biggest bully the worst name you can think of without 
even smiling. You can tell the female bore how terrible she really is and 
the next moment smile and overtly pay her a verbal compliment, 


(2) I have collected considerable evidence that those deaf and dumb 
individuals who when talking use manual movements instead of words, 
use the same manual responses they employ in talking, in their own think- 
ing. But even here society forces minimal movements so that evidence of 
overt responses is often hard to obtain. To Dr. W. I. Thomas I am in- 
debted for the following observation: Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Super- 
intendent of the Perkins Institute and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, 
taught the deaf, dumb and blind Laura Bridgman a hand and finger 
language. He states (in one of the annual reports of the Institute) that 
even in her dreams Laura talked to herself using the finger language with 
great rapidity. 


194. BEHAVIORISM 


Possibly it always will be difficult to obtain an overwhelming mass of 
positive evidence for this view. The processes are faint and other pro- 
cesses such as swallowing, breathing, circulation, etc., are always going on 
and they will probably always obscure the more delicate internal speech 
activities. But there is no other theory at present advanced which is ten- 
able—no other view in line with the known facts of physiology. 


This throws all the burden of proof on any contrary hypothesis, such 
as that advanced by the imagists and by the psychological irradiationists. 
Naturally we are all interested in facts. If when they are obtained they 
make the present theory untenable, the behaviorist will give it up cheer- 
fully. But the whole physiological conception of motor activity—that 
motor activity follows sensory stimulation—will have to be given up along 
with it, 


When and How We Think 


Before trying to answer the question “When do we think ?”’, let me put 
a question to you. When do you act with your hands, legs, trunk, etc? 
You answer rightly, “Whenever action with hands and legs and trunk will 
help me escape from a situation to which I am not adjusted.” The example I 
used in the last lecture (p. 161) was walking to the icebox and eating when 
stomach contractions became intense; or pasting a piece of paper over a 
hole in the window shade to shut out the light. I would like to ask one 
other question, too. When do we overily act with the laryngeal muscles 
—in other words, when do we talk and whisper aloud? The answer is: 
Whenever a situation demands it—-whenever overt action with the voice 
will help us out of a situation which we cannot get out of otherwise. For 
example: I get upon a platform to lecture; I won’t get my fifty dollars 
unless the words are forthcoming. I have broken through the ice and am 
in the water; I cannot get out unless I call aloud for help. Again, some- 
body asks me a question; politeness bids me return a civil answer. 


This all seems fairly clear. Now let us go back to our original ques- 
tion—when do we think? And please bear in mind that thinking with us 
is subvocal talking. We think whenever by the subvocal use of our lan- 
guage organization we can escape from a situation to which we are not 
adjusted. Thousands of examples of such situations confront you almost 
daily. I will give you a rather dramatic one. R’s employer called him in 
one day and said, “I think you would become a much more stable member 
of this organization if you would get married. Will you do it? I want 
you to answer me one way or the other before you leave this room, because 
you either have to get married or I am going to fire you.” R cannot talk 


TALKING AND THINKING 195 


aloud to himself. He would tell too much about his private affairs. If 
he did, he would probably get fired anyway! Manual action will not help 
him out. He has to think it out and having thought it out he must speak 
aloud “yes” or “no”’—make the final overt response in a whole series of 
subvocal reactions. Not all situations which must be met by subvocal 
language responses are quite so severe or so dramatic. Daily you are asked 
such questions as, “Can you lunch with me next Thursday ?”—‘‘Would it 
be possible for you to take a trip to Chicago next week ?”—‘“Could you 
lend me one hundred dollars until the first of the month?”—and the like. 


In accordance with our theory of thinking we would like to suggest 
certain definitions and propositions. 


The term “thinking” should cover all word behavior of whatever kind 
that goes on subvocally. You immediately say: ‘Well, you told us just 
awhile ago that there are people who think aloud and people who never 
get beyond the whispering stage.” By definition this would not be think- 
ing in the strict sense. We would have to say in such cases: He talks out 
his verbal problems aloud to himself or he whispers them aloud to himself, 
This does not mean that thinking is really different from the process of 
talking or whispering aloud to oneself. But since most people do really 
think according to the strict definition of the term, how many obviously 
different kinds of thinking must we assume in order to account for all the 
facts that we know about thinking—which facts we arrive at by watching 
the end result of thinking? And by end result we mean the final overtly 
spoken word (conclusion) of the individual, or the manual action that he 
performs after the process of thinking comes to an end. We believe that 
all forms of thinking can be brought under the following heads: 


(1) The subvocal use of words which have been already completely 
habitized. For example, suppose I ask you the question, ‘What is the 
last word in the little prayer ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’?” If the ques- 
tion has not been asked before, you merely run it off to yourself and then 
respond overtly with the word “take.’’ No learning whatsoever is involved 
in thinking of this kind. You run through the old verbal habit just the 
way the accomplished musician runs through a familiar selection, or a child 
says a well memorized multiplication table aloud. You are merely exer- 
cising wmplicitly a verbal function you have already acquired. 


(2) Thinking of a slightly different type goes on where fairly well 
organized implicit verbal processes are initiated by the situation or stimu- 
lus but are not so well or so recently exercised that they can function with- 
out some learning or relearning occurring. I can make this clear also by 


196 BEHAVIORISM 


an example. Very few of you can give me offhand the result of subvocally 
multiplying 333 by 33, yet all of you are familiar with subvocal arithmetic. 
No new process or procedure is demanded, and with a few inefficient 
verbal movements (verbal fumbling) you can arrive at the correct answer. 
The organization for carrying out this operation is all there but it is a 
little rusty. It has to be practiced before the operation can proceed 
smoothly. Two weeks of practice of three place numbers by two place 
numbers will enable you to give perfect answers almost immediately. We 
have in this type of thinking something similar to what we have in many 
manual activities. Nearly everybody knows how to shuffle and deal cards. 
At the end of a long summer vacation we get pretty adept at it. If we 
happen to go a year or two without playing bridge and then take up the 
cards to shuffle and deal, thé operation is a little rusty, must be practiced 
for a few days before we become adept again. Similarly in this kind of 
thinking ,we are exercising a verbal function implicitly which we never 
completely acquired, or acquired so long ago that there has been some loss 
in retention. 


(3) There is still another kind of thinking. Historically it has been 
called constructive thinking, planning, and the like. It always involves 
the same amount of learning that any first trial involves. The situation 
is new, or practically new to us—that is, it is as new as any situation can 
be to us. Before I give you an example of a new thinking situation, let 
me give you an example of a new manual situation. I first blindfold you 
and then hand you a mechanical puzzle consisting of three rings joined to- 
gether. The problem is to get the three rings to come apart. No amount 
of thinking or “reasoning” or even talking aloud or whispering to yourself 
will bring the solution. In my last lecture I described your behavior in 
getting out of this situation. You would bring to bear all your previous 
manual organization upon the present problem. You would pull at the 
rings, turn them this way and that; finally in one combination of positions 
of the rings they would suddenly slip apart. Such a situation corresponds 
to one trial—the first one in a regular learning experiment. 


In a similar way we are often placed in new thinking situations. We 
have to get out of them by following a similar procedure. I gave you an 
example a moment ago when I told you about the employer who asked his 
employee to get married. Here is another example. 


Your friend comes to you and tells you that he is forming a new 
business. He asks you to leave your present splendid position and come 
into the new business as an equal partner. He is a responsible person; he 
has good financial backing. He makes the offer attractive. He urges the 


TALKING AND THINKING 197 


larger ultimate profits you will make. He enlarges upon the fact that 
you will be your own boss. He has to leave at once to see other people 
interested in the venture. He asks you to call him up and give him an 
answer in an hour. Will you think? Yes, you will, and you'll walk the 
floor too, and you will pull your hair, and you may even sweat and you 
will smoke. Follow out the process step by step: Your whole body 1s as 
busy as though you were cracking rock—but your laryngeal mechanisms 
are setting the pace—they are dominant, 


Let me say once again for emphasis that the most interesting point in 
this kind of thinking is the fact that after such new thinking situations 
have been met or solved once, we usually do not have to face them again 
exactly in the same form. Only the first trial of the learning process takes 
place. But many of our manual situations are like this too. Suppose I 
start out to drive my car to Washington. I do not know much about the 
insides of a car. The car stops—something is wrong. I work and work 
and finally get it going. Fifty miles farther on something goes wrong 
again. Again I meet the situation. In real life we go from one difficult 
situation to another, but each situation is a little different from all the 
others (except where we are acquiring definite functions like typewriting 
or other acts of skill). We cannot plot the curves of our escapes from 
these situations as we can plot learning curves in the laboratory. Our daily 
thinking activity goes on in exactly the same way. Complicated verbal 
situations usually have to be thought out but once, 


What evidence has the behaviorist that the complicated thinking such 
as we have just described goes on in terms of internal speech? I find that 
when I ask my subjects to think aloud they do so, and in terms of words 
(other bodily accessory movements do occur, of course). Their behavior 
in reacting in words is quite similar psychologically to the behavior of the 
rat in the maze. I cannot take the time to dwell very long upon this. You 
will remember that in the last lecture I told you that the rat started out 
from the entrance point slowly; that on the straightaways he ran rapidly; 
that he blundered into the blind alleys and often went back to the starting 
point, instead of going on towards food; that, after getting back to the 
starting point, he would turn and again start towards the food. Now put 
a question to your subject. Ask him to tell you what a certain object is to 
be used for (it must be new and strange to him, and complicated) and ask 
him to figure it out aloud. See if he does not wander about into every 
possible verbal blind alley, get lost, come back and ask you to start him off 
again, or to show him the object or to tell him again all you propose to tell 
him about it, until finally he arrives at the solution or else gives it up (the 


198 BEHAVIORISM 


equivalent of the rat’s giving up the problem of the maze and lying down 
in it and going to sleep). 


I am sure that when you have tried this out for yourself you will be 
convinced that you have an accurate story of how your subject worked 
his problem out by word behavior. If then, you grant that you have the 
whole story of thinking when he thinks aloud, why make a mystery out 
of it when he thinks to himself ? 


You may object here and ask—how does the subject know when to 
stop thinking, when he has solved his problem? You may argue that the 
rat ‘knows’ when it has solved its problem because it gets the food which 
makes the hunger contractions die down. How does a man know when a 
verbal problem is solved? The answer is equally simple. Why in our 
last lecture didn’t our individual keep pasting pieces of paper over the hole 
in the shade when he had shut out the light? Because the light was no 
longer present as a stimulus to keep him moving. Just so in thinking 
situations; as long as there are elements in the situation (verbal) that 
keep stimulating the individual to further internal speech, the process keeps 
going. When he reaches a verbal conclusion, there is no further stimulus 
to thinking (equivalent of getting food). But the verbal conclusion, the 
Q. E. D., may not be reached at one sitting—he may get tired or bored. He 
goes to sleep and tackles it again the next day—if it has to be tackled. 


How the ‘new’ comes into being :—One natural question often raised 
is: How do we ever get new verbal creations such as a poem or a bril- 
liant essay? The answer is that we get them by manipulating words, 
shifting them about until a new pattern 1s hit upon. Since we are never 
twice in the same general situation when we begin to think, the word pat- 
terns will always be different. The elements are all old, that is the words 
that present themselves are just our standard vocabulary—it is only the 
arrangement that is different. Why can’t you, who are not literary, write 
a poem or an essay? You can use all the words the literary man uses. 
It is not your trade, you do not deal in words, your word manipulation is 
poor; the literary man’s is good. He has manipulated words under the 
influence of emotional and practical situations of one kind or another, as 
you have manipulated the keys of the typewriter or a group of statistics, 
or wood, brass and lead. It may help us to go to manual behavior again 
here. How do you suppose Patou builds a new gown? Has he any “pic- - 
ture in his mind” of what the gown is to look like when it is finished? He 
has not, or he would not waste his time making it up; he would make a 
rough sketch of it or he would tell his assistant how to make it. In starting 
upon his work of creation, remember that his organization about gowns is 


TALKING AND THINKING 199 


enormous. Everything in the mode is at his finger tips, as is everything 
that has been done in the past. He calls his model in, picks up a new piece 
of silk, throws it around her; he pulls it in here, he pulls it out there, 
makes it tight or loose at the waist, high or low, he makes the skirt short 
or long. He manipulates the material until it takes on the semblance of 
adress. He has to react to it as a new creation before manipulation stops. 
Nothing exactly like it has ever been made before. His emotional reac- 
tions are aroused one way or another by the finished product. He may rip 
it off and start over again. On the other hand, he may smile and say, 
“Voila, parfait!” In this case the model looks at herself in the mirror and 
smiles and says, “Merci, monsieur.” The other assistants say, “Magni- 
fique!”’ Behold, a Patou model has come into being! But suppose a rival 
couturier happens to be present and Patou hears him in an aside say, 
“Very pretty, but is it not a little like the one he made three years ago? Is 
it that Patou grows a little stale? Is he not becoming too old to keep up 
with this rapidly shifting world of fashion?’ One can believe that Patou 
would tear off the creation and tramp it under foot. In this case manipula- 
tion would start again. Not until the new creation aroused admiration and 
commendation, both his own (an emotional reaction either verbalized or 
unverbalized) and others’, would manipulation be complete (the equivalent 
of the rat’s finding food). 


The painter plies his trade in the same way, nor can the poet boast of 
any other method. Perhaps the latter has just read Keats, perhaps he is 
just back from a moonlight walk in the garden, perchance his beautiful 
fiancee has hinted just a little strongly that he has never sung her charms 
in sufficiently impassioned phrases. He goes to his room, the situation is 
set for him, the only way he can escape it is to do something and the only 
thing he can do is to manipulate words. The touch of the pencil starts the 
verbal activity just as the whistle of the referee at the football games re- 
leases a group of fighting, struggling men. Naturally words expressive of 
the romantic situation he is in soon flow—being in that situation he could 
not compose a funeral dirge nor a humorous poem. Again the situation he 
is in is slightly different from any other he was ever in before and there- 
fore the pattern of his word creation will also be slightly new. 


1 ‘In most artists and in most critics of art there is little of that mastery of technique that 
comes from a lifetime of study with daily improvement as the goal. (The artist draws 
around him an admiring group or a patron and stops improving at the adolescent level. 
Hence most artists are children—not intelligent at all, Most of the hokum comes from 
patrons who think they understand art. It is their all-admiring attitude toward even a 
budding artist that keeps the artists children. If the so-called ‘high-brow’ patrons and 
ebservers of art would only admit that they have no other basis for judging art than that 
it stirs up wisceral (and at times manual and verbal) reactions, then we could not criticise 
their pretensions. On this basis, good art for the child of five is one thing, good art for 
the Hottentot is another, good art for the sophisticated few in New York is still another. 


200 BEHAVIORISM 


Is There No Meaning in Acts 


One of the chief criticisms directed against the behaviorist’s position 
is that it is absolutely inadequate in its account of meaning. In our 
definitions may I point out that the logic of the critic is poor here? The 
theory must be judged on these premises. The premises of the behaviorist 
contain no propositions about meaning. It is an historical word borrowed 
from philosophy and introspective psychology. It has no scientific conno- 
tation. Go again, please, to your psychologists and philosophers. 


Let me paraphrase their words—the meaning of the fragrant, yellow 
orange in front of me is an idea, but if at any time there happens to be an 
idea in my mind instead of a perception, the meaning of that idea is another 
idea, and so on ad infinitum. Mrs. Eddy, even in her most ingenious verbal 
moments, could have constructed nothing more fitting to tantalize the 
earnest seeker after knowledge than the current explanations of meaning. 


Here is the story as I see it, since the behaviorist in order to protect 


himself must give some kind of account of it. Let us take a simple case. 
Let us take the object “fire.” 


(1) Iam burnt by it at three years of age. For some time there- 
after I run away from it. By a kindly process of unconditioning, my 
family get me over the complete negative response. Then new condition- 
ing takes place. 


(2) I learn to approach the fire after coming in from the cold. 


(3) I learn to cook my fish and game upon it on my first hunting 
trip. 





Still more hokum comes from the so-called art and dramatic critics. ‘There really 
should be no art or dramatic critics. Our visceral reactions-—the final touchstone of 
artistic judgments (at least of the so-called critics who are not artists themselves)—are our 
own. ‘They are all we have left in the way of responses that have not been under the 
steam-roller prcecess of society. From an emotional standpoint, my criticism of a picture, 
a poem, or the playing of a piece of music is as good as anybody else’s. If I had to pass 
a critical judgment upon a work of art, a picture for example, I should do it experi- 
mentally. JI should arrange to let crowds of people from all walks of life wander one at 
a time into a well-lighted room. I should have rival stimuli about, such as magazines, knick- 
knacks of one kind or another, two or three pictures on the wall, including the one I 
wanted to have judged. If an individual under observation spent time at this picture, if 
he showed scme emotional reaction such as grief, joy, rage, then I should put him down 
as reacting positively to it. At the end of the day I should be able to say: ‘‘The so- 
called art critics will say your picture is terrible, the children will not look at it, the 
women are shocked by it, but the traveling salesmen chuckle with glee over it. It will be 
a failure if you exhibit it; I should advise you to send it to some sales manager and let 
him hang it over his desk.’”? What I am trying to say is that there is a vast amount of 
charlatanism both in the making of art objects and in their so-called appreciation. Assumi- 
ing that you are a real journeyman at the job—that is, you have passed your apprentice- 
ship at the trade—whether you are recognized as a good artist or not depends largely upon 
whether you can get an admiring group around you, whether Mr. and Mrs. X have dis- 


covered you (and you may have been dead a hundred years or more before they do it) and 
made a hero of you. 


TALKING AND THINKING 201 


(4) I learn that I can melt lead in it and that if I heat my iron red 
hot I can fashion it to suit my needs. 


During the course of many years I become conditioned in a hundred 
ways to fire. In other words, depending upon the situation J am now in 
and the series of situations leading up to the present one, I may do one of 
a hundred things in the presence of fire. As a matter of fact J do but one 
at a time. Which one? The one which my previous organization and 
my present physiological state call forth. 1 am hungry; the fire makes 
me start to cook bacon and fry eggs. On another occasion I go to the brook 
and get water to put out the fire after I am through camping. On another, 
I run down the street yelling “Fire!’’ I chase to the telephone and send 
for the fire department. On still another occasion when a forest fire 
hedges me about, I jump into the lake. Ona cold day I stand in front of 
the fire and toast my whole body. Again, under the influence of some propa- 
gandist of murder, I pick up a burning brand and set fire to a whole 
village. If you are willing to agree that ‘meaning is just a way of saying 
that out of all the ways the individual has of reacting to this object, at any 


one time he reacts in only one of these ways, then I find no quarrel with Jf 


meaning. While I have chosen my illustrations in the manual field, the 
same procedure holds good in the verbal field. In other words, when we 
understand the genesis of all forms of an individual’s behavior, know the 
varieties of his organization, can arrange or manipulate the various situa- 
tions that will call out one or another form of his organization, then 
we no longer need such a term as meaning. Meaning is just one way of 
telling what the individual is doing, 


So the behaviorist can turn the tables upon his critics. They cannot 
give any explanation of meaning. He can, but he does not believe the 
word is needed or that it is useful except as a literary expression.’ 


In this preliminary sketch of the function of language in our total 
organization, there are doubtless many things not clear to you. I have left 
out of the discussion two problems which we must take up in the next 
lecture. They are (1) What is the relation between verbal behavior and 


aati and visceral behavior? (2) Do we have to think always in terms of 
words: 


1 Many of the introspectionists’ terms should be similarly turned back upon them. For example, 
attention. The behaviorist, if he felt inclined, could “explain’’. attention and define it and 
use it, but he doesn’t need the word. The introspectionist, even James, has to define it 
in terms of vitalism as an active process that selects this or that from other happenings. 
Such terms, of course, only slowly die out. Until they are dead someone will always 
be criticising the behavioristic explanation for inadequacy. 


XI 
DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 
Or Does Our Whole Body Do the Thinking? 


Introduction :—In the last two lectures we have studied manual and 
language habits as though they were organized in separate and distinct 
ways—even at different times. My reason for taking them up in this way 
was to get a much-needed simplicity in presentation. Now we must put 
them together and show the mutual relations existing among language 
organization, manual organization and visceral organization. I have sev- 
eral times maintained that when an individual reacts to an object or situa- 
tion, his whole body reacts. For us this means that manual organization, 
language organization (after it begins) and visceral organization all func- 
tion together—each and every time the body reacts. There are some ex- 
ceptions to this, of course, but let us not trouble with them at the present 
time. These three forms of organization could not function together in 
mutually supplementary (and often in substitutive) ways unless we put on 
FR AO SE NEN simultaneously as parts of one complete and integral 

unction. 


If this seems a bit difficult, possibly an illustration will clear it up. 
Watch two individuals, as I recently did, walking through the woods. Sud- 
denly a snake crawls out into their path, coils and sends forth a faint rattle. 
Both spring back, turn pale, the hair on their heads stiffens, their mouths 
fly open, respiration is checked. Suddenly one yells, “Snake,” the other 
cries, “Rattler.” Both cry, “Kill it.’ One runs for a large stick, the other 
for a rock. While they are wresting implements from the wayside, the 
snake starts for the brush. One calls out, “There he goes to the right under 
that little scrub pine.” Let us turn from this interesting bit of natural 
history back to the more prosaic discussion of behaviorism. Is there any 
doubt in your minds that this coiled rattler produced a profound reaction 
in each individual? Is there any doubt that language, manual and visceral 
organizations functioned simultaneously ? 


Simultaneous Acquisition of Manual, Language and Visceral Organizations 


[t certainly requires little argument to convince those of you interested 
in genetic psychology, that our hands, larynx and viscera learn together 
and later function together. Under the influence of social demands, the 
young, developing human who has well entered into his world of speech has 


202 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 203 


to put on his verbal and visceral habits simultaneously with his manual 
habits. The only exception is the silent soul who grows up in an isolated 
community around parents too stern to talk to him. In his case speech 
habits lag behind the other two sets. Possibly it is more nearly accurate 
to say that verbal, manual and laryngeal activities become organized to- 
gether as parts of the total habit system we form around each object and 
situation in the world we live in. We may illustrate this by a simple sketch. 


‘Error 

A ASS BA UT V7 Eke Ok 0 FI 
5 Ese MIEN Pod Ls Fe ood EM dW 0 4 

SAS TC 

CaS te a zat 

PSN Se=feassaiaiae COON Gh gata 
iN SCE re ee ei 

















i“ 








EE SSS SSE 
NM a el 

cea AL A TO CT 
pT SE PP OP ee 


Fig 18 


Rough sketch showing what goes on in learning to play golf. Our hands (and 
arms, trunk, legs and feet), our larynx and our viscera all learn at the same time 
how to play golf. 





A—shows the curve of manual organization 
B—the verbal organization 
C—the visceral organization 


This rough sketch gives you an indication of the kind of organization 
that goes on when we learn to play golf. The three separate but not inde- 
pendent habit systems are shown developing together—the arrows indicate 
that they are mutually interdependent: (A) represents manual organiza- 
tion in playing golf—the use of feet, legs, trunk, arms, hands and fingers; 
(B) represents language—overt, whispering, subvocal, such as the names 
of the holes, the clubs, types of shots, the various lies, tor the shot should 
be played, the types of faults we make in playing, repetition of the admo- 
nition of the professional who is teaching us, and the like; (C) represents 
the curve of visceral organization—circulation changes occur during, 
before and after each shot is made, the stomach glands change their 
rhythm, the elimination apparatus is probably slowed down or else speeded 


204 BEHAVIORISM 


up, all of the viscera must share in the training. I do not have to convince 
you of our right to include visceral organization in our total organization 
for playing golf. In Lecture 4 I talked to you about the great mass of © 
unstriped muscular tissue we have all over the body. It is the main mass 
composing the stomach, heart, lungs, diaphragm, blood vessels, glands, 
excretory organs, and sex organs. I spoke there of the evidence that is 
slowly accumulating to show that the movements of these muscular and 
glandular organs soon become conditioned. I need only to enumerate our 
facts again. Eliminative functions become conditioned at an early age. 
The glands of the mouth and stomach and possibly many others likewise 
soon become set in habit moulds. The pupils of the eyes, breathing, and 
circulation all show the effects of habit formation. Now these so-called 
autonomic processes do not become conditioned for no reason at all. They 
actually play a role in acts of skill. Who can shoot accurately or drive a 
golf ball well if eliminative functions are threatening, with a full bladder, 
with gas pressure, 1f the sweat glands are not functioning, or are function- 
ing too intensely, if the mouth is dry, if digestion is upset, 1f yawning takes 
place just asa shot is being made, if internal sex stimuli are insistent? All 
of these must fall into line when accurate acts of skill are taking place. 
They are just as dangerous to efficiency as instability and trembling in the 
striped muscles of our arms and legs, or as are sore and hide-bound mus- 
cles of arms and fingers. 


I will assume, then, that training of the viscera, even in acts of motor 
skill, is just as important as training of hands and fingers. Language is an 
equally important element in the total bodily organization that goes on in 
acquiring acts of skill. 


Oftentimes, indeed, it is more important. The business man must 
talk golfing, hunting, fishing and the like even if he cannot exhibit much 
proficiency in them. He can always refuse to go golfing, hunting or fishing 
when his lack of manual skill is not equal to his verbal performance, but 
he cannot refuse to talk about the technical points of these avocations and 
stay in the athletic group. 


Furthermore, since so many millions of man’s adjustments are verbal, 
the verbal organization soon comes to be dominant.’ This dominating 
verbal process soon comes to initiate and control arm, leg and trunk organi- 
zation.” 


1 See K. S. Lashley’s article, Psychol. Rev., 1923. 


2 A fact which, if it had been grasped by the introspectionists, would have saved them from con- 
siderable ‘perturbation. For example, when they call themselves parallelists on the first page 
and use interaction all through the rest of their text; when they try to make ‘consciousness’ 
do something—correct an error in a habit—or fix the happy accidental successful movement 
when a new habit is being formed by the trial and error process. 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 205 


Watch the golfer as he makes a bad shot; ask him what he did wrong. 
If you are a lip reader you can in many cases read his words without asking 
him any questions. “I stood too close to the ball. I’ve got to learn to 
stand back. I bent my legs; I didn’t follow through.” Watch him address 
the ball for his next shot. He says to himself, “Stand back a little.” and 
he steps back, etc. The verbal organization, in addition to its usefulness 
in getting notice in the club house, is on the field an intimate part of the 
total organization called into action when learning to play golf, 


The behaviorist believes that the verbal process whenever it is present 
is always an actual functioning part of every act of skill. 


If this view, that we verbalize our manual acts, is accepted, it 
gives us a new way of looking at “memory” which we discussed in the last 
lecture. You can see that “memory” ts really the functioning of the verbal 
part of a total habit. Once we have verbalized a bodily habit we can always 
talk about it. If you couldn’t talk about golf, the only way you could 
prove or exhibit your organization in it (your “memory” of it) would be 
to go to the golf field and play it out hole by hole. But the situation for 
touching off your verbal organization on golf occurs a thousand times more 
frequently than does the actual situation touching off your organization 
for playing golf (simultaneous presence of links, leisure, clubs, golf balls, 
companions, clothes, plus bodily and verbal set—“I am going to play golf 
now’). What is popularly meant by “memory” is, then, the running 
through or exhibition of the verbal part of a total bodtly organization. The 
manual part of this organization is not being called out—if the manual part 
were called out, we’d say “he is doing it” instead of “he is remembering 
it.’ I made it clear to you in lecture 9 that if one other part—the manual 
(‘A’ in our diagram)—-of the total organization should become operative 
under appropriate stimulation (of the golf field), the individual’s organized 
manual response with the club would be just as good a demonstration of 
“memory” as the verbal talk about golf. 


Now let us attempt to make the whole process of bodily integration 
involving all these factors clear by a series of diagrams. Let us first dia- 
gram hand response to visual stimuli. In these diagrams we are not pictur- 
ing the nervous system but units of bodily organization involving receptors, 
conductors, effectors, with all their subsidiaries, 


Environment, presenting as it does its objects always in a series (be- 
cause man is a moving animal), forces a certain 1—2—3 order in our man- 
ual organization as Fig. 19 shows. 


206 BEHAVIORISM 


Series of objects ( Stimuli) 





Series of anaesthetic Responses (manual Organization) 
(Fig. 19) 


Sketch to show how manual habits form. S1, S2, S3, etc., are objects (for 
example, the separate notes of a musical score). RK1, RK2, etc., are the sepa- 
rate manual responses made to each separate note. This shows that when you 
see note G (S1) you strike Key G (RK1). 


In this diagram S1, S2, etc., represent visual stimuli—for example, the 
notes of a melody you are playing with one finger on the piano. RKI, 
RK2, RK3, etc., represent respectively the responses to the visual stimuli 
Do LP ie DOL He LCs 


But after the notes have been played a considerable number of times 
(habit formed), only the initial note (S1) is necessary to call out the total 
organization. The change in the diagrammatic illustration is now as 


follows: 
ae oe pas pe 
Be 
4 


! ey ine 


(Fig. 20) 


Fig. 20 shows what happens’ when you have learned to play a simple melody. 
S1l—the first note (G)—is shown you, then the score is taken away. But you go 
on playing. Why? Because as soon as you saw the first note G and struck Key G 
on the piano, that movement (RK1) became the stimulus for the next movement 
(RK2). In other words, the first response you made became a substitute stimulus 
for the second object. 


RK1, RK2, RK3, RK4 and RKS, while they are still responses as in 
the first case, when the notes could be seen, now become substitutible for 






TALKING AND THINKING 207 


the visual stimulus of the notes in the order in which they were learned; 
that is, the moment they cease being responses (or during the process) 
they become kinaesthetic stimuli for the next response. This is the old 
standard habit diagram J promised to give you in the last lecture. 


This diagram is, of course, a classroom device. What is not often 
incorporated in it—and this is the central topic in this lecture— is the fact 
that the environment simultaneously organizes the other two sets of pro- 
cesses—viz., those connected with words and those connected with the 
viscera. Let us change our diagram to show the facts. In the diagram 
below S1 and S2 remain the objects; RK1 stands for the kinaesthetic 
organization with respect to the object; RV1 the verbal organization; and 





CHigy Zh), 
This simple diagram shows 


the same facts as Fig. 18—that 
whenever we react to any object 
such as Sl, we react not only 
with the striped muscles of the 
arms (RK1) but also verbally 


(RV1) and viscerally (RG1). 


RGI the visceral organization, respectively. I would like to point out here 
that just as RK1 becomes a motor substitute stimulus for the object S2, 
just so do RV1 and RGI1 become laryngeal and visceral substitutes respect- 
ively for S2. 


Every complex bodily response then must involve manual, verbal and 
visceral organizations. In acquiring skill in language, the segments of the 
body undergoing the most active training or organization are the mouth, 
neck, throat and chest; in acquiring muscular skill, the most active segments 
are the trunk, legs, arms, hands and fingers; in acquiring emotional organi- 
zation, the visceral segments are most active. In later everyday perform- 


208 BEHAVIORISM 


ance we can describe the relative role each plays in any act of the whole 
body by saying that in chopping wood, for example, manual organization 
is most in evidence; in lecturing, the verbal; in grieving, sorrowing, loving, 
the visceral. 


Some Exceptions to the General Rule 


I fear you will tell me that I no sooner make the waters clear for you 
than I begin to muddy them again. However, we must stick as closely as 
we can to the facts. There are at least two things in the way of accepting 
the above generalization as a complete expression of the truth. Some 
bodily organization seems to go on without the formation of corresponding 
verbal habits, viz., 


(1) All organization put on in infancy; 

(2) All organization put on throughout life where visceral segments are 
dominant. 

Let us look at each of these separately for a moment. 


Organization in Infancy 


The recent work on infants, with which you are now so familiar, 
seems to show that an almost unbelievable amount of organization goes on 
in infants too young to talk. This shows itself not only in the overt organi- 
zation of arms and legs and trunk, but equally well in the visceral field, as 
shown in the conditioned fears, rages, loves (taking the form of strong 
attachments to mother or nurses), tantrums, negative reactions to people, 
and the like. 


Our observation shows that the infant cannot before thirty months of 
age parallel each unit manual habit with a corresponding word habit. To- 
day in front of me is a child two and one-fourth years of age. He can 
speak, under appropriate stimulation of object or situation, possibly five 
hundred words, but sentence formation is of the level of “Rose take Billy 
bye-bye,” ‘Put Billy’s coat on,” etc. He is still at the age of incessant 
repetition of words and sentences. When the nurse brings him in, the 
father says: ‘What did you see, Billy?” and he says: “What did you see,” 
etc. In contrast, this same infant learned to manipulate at two years of age 
a rather large, pedalled ‘kiddy car,’ to propel it, guide it, mount it, coast 
down hill, drag it up inclines and along the sidewalk, and to fly down. 
He reacted against help, would fall off without crying, mount and start 
over again. ‘The only verbal parallel is, “Billy ride kiddy car.” There is 
no verbal organization which you can call out relating to turning the bar to 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 209 


the left or right when he turns to left or right; about pedalling being 
harder uphill than down; pointing out that the greater the incline the more 
rapid his speed, and the like. Yet overt, manual responses are perfect, 
even after weeks and months of no practice. This example from hundreds 
of others shows that the manual habits of two-and-one-half-year-and-under 
infants are unverbalized. The only way you can show ‘memory’ or organi- 
zation in such cases is to put the child in the situation where he can exhibit 
that bodily organization. Contrast this with the three-and-a-half to four- 
year-old who goes walking, to a party or to a movie, or who takes a railway 
trip, and talks you blind, deaf and dumb about it. This conception helps 
us, I believe, in removing a lot of mystery in psychology, for example, it 
throws most of Freud’s psychology out of court (but not his facts nor his 
therapy). 


The Freudians, as you know, claim that the childhood memories are 
lost because childhood is an age where free, spontaneous actions bringing 
‘pleasure’ come under the ban of the social; society punishes and a painful 
repression into the ‘unconscious’ takes place. They claim further that these 
childhood memories are lost until the analyst gives the mystical phrase 
which opens the cave where the memories are stored. The unsatisfactory 
ground for this assumption is now apparent. The child had never verbal- 
ized these acts. 


I have become totally skeptical of any so-called adult ‘memory’ ante- 
dating certainly the two and one-half year childhood period. My skepti- 
cism comes too from observation of children and not through any presup- 
positions. Today I tested out a hungry two-and-one-fourth-year-old baby 
with a nursing bottle filled with milk, The test in detail follows: 


Test on Memory for Bottle 


Baby B, 2 years, 3 months of age. 


At 12:30 noon, the baby’s meal time, his regular nurse picked him up 
and said: “Dinner, Billy,” laid him flat on his back in the crib as was her 
usual custom when he formerly was fed from the bottle. She handed him 
the warmed bottle just as she had one and one-fourth years before. 


The baby took the bottle in both hands, then began to manipulate the 
nipple with his finger, then began to cry because ‘dinner’ with him at noon, 
at this age, consisted of meat and vegetables. When told to “Take his milk,’ 
he put the nipple to his mouth and got a taste of milk and began to chew 
the nipple. Nursing could not be called out. He called to his mother and 
cried and handed her the bottle and raised himself to a sitting posture. He 


210 _ BEHAVIORISM 


pushed the bottle toward the mother, then toward the father, with both 
hands. He was then let down to the floor and good humor was restored. 


He was told “Jimmie drinks from bottle” (his infant brother). Then 
he took the bottle, put it in his mouth and walked off, chewing the nipple 
as he went. Nursing had disappeared through disuse. It had been ‘for- 
gotten.’ (This act when practiced can continue indefinitely. I have 
records of children who nursed at the breast until they were over three 
years of age.) 


Billy nursed at the mother’s breast only during the first month and 
was then put wholly on the bottle. At the end of nine months he was 
weaned from the bottle and made to drink from a silver mug. Until he 
was one year of age he drank his morning orange juice from a nursing 
bottle. He never saw a nursing bottle from that day until the day of the 
test. 


Before the test took place every effort was made to stir up a verbal 
memory of some kind, but unavailingly. He was asked, “Didn’t you used 
to drink from a bottle when you were little?’ Then he was told that he 
used to drink from a bottle. Then he was asked, “Can’t Billy drink from 
a bottler” etc. His behavior throughout was exactly that of reacting to a 
strange new object, of being forced to react to it when his whole body 
was ready to react to his regular food. 


The test shows that not only was there around this once all-important 
infant act no verbal organization that could be tapped, but that even the 
manual organization (including of course sucking, etc.) was gone. 


Thus infancy, where the process of ‘repression’ is supposed to bury so 
many unconscious treasures which come to light under the prestidigitation 
of the analyst, turns out to be a wholly natural kind of state. Bodily habits 
form normally, both habits of avoidance and approach, and habits of ma- 
nipulation; but the bodily habits lack verbal correlates because the infant 
puts them on at a later age. 


I believe the whole of Freud’s ‘unconscious’ can be adequately cared 
for along the lines I have indicated. The Freudians have no positive evi- 
dence to offer in controversion, at least they have offered none. I find no 
actual observation in their literature of the day-by-day life of the infant. 
Hug-Hellmuth’s volume on infant psychology might just as well have been 


1 On the same date he was similarly given an opportunity to nurse from the breast. He could 
not be made to take the nipple into his mouth and soon began to struggle at being held in 
the lap in the nursing position. 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 211 


written without any infant being present, so inaccurate and non-scientific 
are its observations and assumptions. 


Unverbalized Organization Where Visceral Segments Dominate 
During the Training Process 


It has been demonstrated that conditioned visceral or emotional re- 
sponses are constantly forming from infancy on; that these conditioned 
responses are transferred to a variety of situations; and that they persist 
for long periods of time, possibly throughout life. And yet we cannot talk 
about visceral organization. 


One reason for this is of course social. Society makes no demands 
upon us, or few at any rate, to talk about unstriped muscular and glandular 
habits. When conditioned salivary reflexes are established in childhood, 
the child is never told about them; no demand is made upon man to verbal- 
ize elimination habits, habits connected with the slowing or speeding of the 
sexual orgasm. Few men and fewer women have paralleled their sex 
organization with words. 


Again, what child has ever verbally organized its incestuous attach- 
ments? Not one. Nor has there been any ‘repression’ because society was 
not and is not organized to place youthful incestuous attachments under 
the ban (quite the contrary). Only a few days ago one of our most dis- 
tinguished pediatricians, in condemning the idea of an experimental 
nursery, said, “Infants need a mother’s love; they should be danced at her 
knee, petted and made much of.” To tell a mother who is breeding habits 
of dependence in her child by letting it always play under her eye, who 
always feeds it herself (creating thereby a situation where a violent tan- 
trum will occur if any one else ever has to feed it), that she is laying up 
trouble for the child when it has to break its nest habits, is to arouse a 
violent storm of protest. 


Only a slight study of this field convinces the geneticist that a large 
part of our visceral organization goes on from infancy to old age without 
corresponding verbalization. Even an adequate list of names for visceral 
objects and situations is absent and there is no social mechanism for the 
word-conditioning of the developing subject. A little of it is verbalized. 
This comes about when the acts of belching, elimination, releasing of gas, 
masturbation, and the like are exhibited in the presence of elders. The 
psychological process of verbal conditioning takes the form of, “You must 
not let your stomach growl in company.” “Run outside or cough to covet 
it up.” “Say ‘excuse me’ when you do that in company.”’ While many 


EWA BEHAVIORISM 


similar examples of verbalization in the visceral realm occur, verbalization 
is the exception, not the rule. To help you hold all this together, let me 
give you a kind of general summary: 


1. An enormous number of manual habits are formed, especially during 
infancy, without corresponding verbal habits. 


2. A still larger amount of visceral organization (organization in un- 
striped muscles and glandular components) is constantly forming with- 
out verbal organization, not only during infancy but also throughout 
life. 


3. The assumption seems to be reasonably grounded that this unverbal- 
ized organization makes up the Freudian’s ‘unconscious.’ (Another 
possible source of the so-called. ‘unconscious’ in line with, natural 
science might be found in cases where for one reason or another the 
verbal organization is blocked, e. g., where there is simultaneously 
present a stimulus to say the girl’s name in a love affair and one to 
remain silent. In such cases only the visceral organization appears, 
such as incoherent sounds, blushing and the like.) It likewise makes 
up possibly the introspectionist’s ‘affective processes.’ 


4. The genetic rule, when the proper age is reached, is to put on simul- 
taneously word, manual and visceral organizations. 


Gn 


Once the verbalization of the manual begins, word organization soon 
becomes dominant because man has to solve his problems verbally. The 
word stimulus can thereafter call out any organized response in the 
organism, or modify any activity already going on. For example, “I 
must start to build that bookcase new,” or “I am shooting too high; I 
must aim lower.” 


6. That aspect of ‘memory, which is supposed by the introspectionist to 
be difficult for the behaviorist to cope with, is merely the calling out 
of the verbal parallel of manual habits earlier put on. Memory in the 
behaviorist’s sense is any exhibition of manual, verbal or visceral 
organization put on prior to the time of the test. 


I believe that when subjective psychologists have given verbalization 
its due place in the whole process of bodily organization they will be ready 
to admit that being ‘conscious’ is merely a popular or literary phrase de- 
scriptive of the act of naming our universe of objects both inside and out- 
side, and that ‘introspecting’ is a much narrower popular phrase descriptive 
of the more awkward act of naming tissue changes that are taking place, 
i. €., movements of muscles, tendons, glandular secretions, respiration, cir- 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 213 


culation and the like. They must be looked upon solely as literary forms 
of expression. 


Can We Think Without Words? 


All that we have said so far in this lecture helps us to understand the 
more difficult phases of thinking which we could not go into in the last 
lecture. One of the stumbling blocks in the way of the complete acceptance 
of the behaviorist’s theory of thought is the implied assumption that we 
think only in words, that is, in terms of verbal motor contractions. My 
own answer has been: Yes, or in conditioned word substitutes, such as the 
shrug of the shoulders or other bodily response, found in the eyelids, the 
muscles of the eye or even in the retina (I assume of course that ‘images,’ 
those ghostlike ‘memory’ pictures of objects not present to the senses, have 
been given up in psychology!) These conditioned substitutes represent the 
abridging and short-circuiting process that goes on in all original learning. 


I am inclined now to bring out some points I neglected in my 1920 
paper before the International Congress for Psychology and Philosophy. I 
should like to say here emphatically that whenever the individual is think- 
ing, the whole of his bodily organization is at work (implicitly)—even 
though the final solution shall be a spoken, written or subvocally expressed 
verbal formulation. In other words, from the moment the thinking prob- 
lem is set for the individual (by the situation he is in) activity is aroused 
that may lead finally to adjustment. Sometimes the activity goes on in 
terms of (1) implicit manual organization; more frequently in terms of 
(2) implicit verbal organization; sometimes in terms of (3) implicit (or 
even overt) visceral organization. If (1) or (3) dominates, thinking takes 
place without words. 


The diagram I show here is only an elaboration of Fig. 21. It 
makes clear my own present convictions about thinking. In this diagram 
I take it for granted that the body has been simultaneously organized to 
respond to a series of objects, manually, verbally and viscerally (Fig. 18). 
I take it for granted further that one of the objects, the initial one, S1, is 
at hand and that it starts the body to work on its problem of thinking. The 
object actually present may be a person asking the individual a question 
(take the question I asked in my last lecture—“Will X leave his present 
job to become Y’s partner?”). By hypothesis the world is shut off and he 
has to think his problem out. 


Please note that RK1 can arouse RK2, RV2, RG2; whereas RV1 can 
call out RK2, RV2, RG2; and RG1 can call out RK2Z, RV2 or RG2; and 
that all of them can serve respectively as kinaesthetic, laryngeal or visceral 


214 BEHAVIORISM 


hyhothesi$ Only the citie? 
By 06 ect Of the dod ope Present. 





(Fig. 22) 


This diagram shows the behaviorist’s theory of thinking. Sometimes we think 
by using manual, verbal and visceral organizations simultaneously. Sometimes only 
the verbal, sometimes only the visceral and at other times only the manual. In the 
diagram the organization taking part in the whole thinking process is enclosed be- 
tween the two continuous solid lines. 


The diagram shows clearly that thinking involves all three sets of our organized 
reaction systems. 


substitutes for S2, the next real object in the series of objects originally 
producing the organization. Note that, in accordance with the diagram, 
thinking activity may go on for a considerable time without words. If at 
any step in the process the RV organization does not appear, thinking goes 

on without words, | 


It seems reasonable, does it not, to suppose that thinking activity at 
successive moments of time may be kinaesthetic, verbal or emotional. 
When kinaesthetic organization becomes blocked or is lacking, then the 
verbal processes function; if both are blocked, the emotional organization 
becomes dominant. By hypotheses, however, the final response or adjust- 
ment, if one is reached, must be verbal (subvocal). It is convenient to call 
this final verbal act a judgment. 


This line of argument shows how one’s total organization is brought 
into the process of thinking. I think it shows clearly that manual and vis- | 
ceral organizations are operative in thinking even when no verbal processes 
are present—it shows that we could still think in some sort of way even tf 
we had no words! 


DO WE ALWAYS THINK IN WORDS 215 


We thus think and plan with the whole body. But since, as I pointed 
out above, word organization is, when present, probably usually dominant 
over visceral and manual organization, we can say that ‘thinking’ is largely 
subvoca} talking—provided we hasten to explain that it can occur without 


words, 


This lecture has helped us to put various bits of the human being’s 
organization, hitherto studied part by part, together again. We had to 
dissect man for pedagogical purposes. In the next and final lecture, on 
personality, we shall put man completely together and look at him as a com- 
plicated, going, organic machine. 


XII 
PERSONALITY 


Presenting the Thesis That Our Personality 1s But the 
Out-growth of the Habits We Form 


Introduction :—If a hundred individuals were asked to give a defini- 
tion of personality, each of the hundred individuals regardless of his walk 
in life would return an answer, and his answer would differ in many par- 
ticulars from every other answer. It is a word used by almost everybody 
from professors of psychology down to newsboys on the street. The 
behaviorist usually likes to discard psychological words that have no pre- 
cise meaning and that are so laden down by bad history, but through some 
perversity of his nature he is trying to keep the term personality because 
it does fit so beautifully into his general psychological system. 


What Does the Behaviorist Mean by Personality? 


All through our study of behavior so far we have had to dissect the 
individual. We have had to talk about what the individual did in this, in 
that or in the other situation. My excuse is that it was necessary to look 
at the wheels before we could understand what the whole machine is good 
for. In this lecture let us try to think of man as an assembled orgamce 
machine ready to run. I mean nothing very difficult by this. Take four 
wheels with tires, axles, differentials, gas engine, body; put them together 
and we have an automobile of a sort. The automobile 1s good for certain 
kinds of duties. Depending upon its makeup, we-use it for one kind of 
job or another. If it is a Ford, it is good for going to market, for running 
errands and for driving over the roughest roads and in the most difficult 
kinds of weather. If it is a Rolls Royce, it is good for pleasure riding, 
calling on people who are just a little above us in the social scheme, im- 
pressing upon those poorer than ourselves that we are persons of wealth, 
and the like. In a similar way this man, this organic animal, this John Doe, 
who so far as parts are concerned is made up of head, arms, hands, trunk, 
legs, feet, toes and nervous, muscular and glandular systems, who has no 
education and is too old to get it, is good for certain jobs. He is as strong 
as a mule, can work at manual labor all day long. He is too stupid to lie, 
too bovine to laugh or play. He will work all right as a “white wing,” as a 
digger of ditches or as a chopper of wood. Individual William Wilkins, 
having the same bodily parts but who is good looking, educated, sophisti- 


216 


PERSONALITY, 217 


cated, accustomed to good society, travelled, is good for work in many 
situations—as a diplomat, a politician or a real estate salesman. He, how- 
ever, was a liar from infancy and could never be trusted in a responsible 
place. He is too selfish to be placed over other people. He would leave 
his work in the middle of any afternoon for golf or a bridge game. 


Whence come these differences in the machine? In the case of man, 
all healthy individuals, as we saw in the lectures on Instincts, start out 
equal. Quite similar words appear in our far-famed Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. The signers of that document were nearer right than one might 
expect, considering their dense ignorance of psychology. They would have 
been strictly accurate had the clause “at birth’ been inserted after the word 
equal. It is what happens to individuals after birth that makes one a hewer 
of wood and a drawer of water, another a diplomat, a thief, a successful 
business man or a far-famed scientist. What our advocates of freedom in 
1776 took no account of is the fact that the Deity himself could not equalize 
40-year-old individuals who have had such different environmental train- 
ings as have the American people. 


In studying the personality of an individual—what he is good for, 
what he isn’t good for and what isn’t good for him—we must observe him 
as he carries out his daily complex activities; not just at this moment or 
that, but week in and week out, year in and year out, under stress, under 
temptation, under affluence and under poverty. In other words, in order 
to write up the personality, the “shop ticket,’ for an individual, we must 
call him in and put him through all the possible tests in the shop before we 
are in a position to know what kind of person—what kind of organic 
machine—he is. 


What do we mean by putting the individual through his various paces 
in the world we live in? Well, I have in mind the answers to such ques- 
tions as these: What kind of work habits has John Doe? What kind of 
husband does he make? What kind of father? How does he behave to- 
ward his subordinates? His superiors? How does he behave toward his 
partners or equals in whatever group he works? Is he really a man of 
principle or is he a psalm-singing, sanctimonious individual on Sunday and 
a grasping, close-fisted, unscrupulous business man on Monday? Is he 
pleasantly well bred, or is he over-courteous, with accent and mannerisms 
dependent on the college he grew up in, or the last country he visited? 
Does he make a faithful friend to friends in need? Will he work hard? 
Is he cheerful? Does he keep his troubles to himself? 


The behaviorist naturally is not interested in his morals, except as @ 
scientist ; in fact he doesn’t care what kind of man he is. He must study 


218 BEHAVIORISM 


any individual, though, whenever society calls for analysis. As a scientific 
man the behaviorist would like to be able to give an answer not only to 
such questions as we have raised, but to all other questions which could be 
asked about John Doe. It is a part of the behaviorist’s scientific job to be 
able to state what the human machine is good for and to render serviceable 
predictions about its future capacities whenever society needs such in- 
formation, 


Analysis of Personality 


In order that there may be no vagueness about the behaviorist’s use 
of “personality,” let me tell you more concretely what I mean by the term. 
Do you remember the diagram I gave you in Lecture VI (p. 106)? There 
I talked about the development of the activity stream. I pointed out that 
at birth and at different intervals thereafter unlearned beginnings of be- 
havior are always present. I pointed out also that most of these unlearned 
activities begin to become conditioned a few hours after birth. From that 
time on each such unit of unlearned behavior develops into an ever expand- 
ing system. In the chart I gave there we could draw in only a few lines to 
indicate what happens. 


Suppose now that this chart of the activity stream be made complex 
enough to show the history of every bit of organization the individual has 
had from infancy to the age of 24. Just assume, for purposes of argument, 
that the habit curve for everything that you can possibly do had been plot- 
ted out by a behaviorist who had studied you under experimental conditions 
throughout the whole of your life up to the age of 24. Now it is obvious 
that 1f at the age of 24 he took a cross section of your activity, he would 
be able to catalogue everything that you can do. He would find, would he 
not, that many of these separate activities are related—and please do not 
accuse me of bringing in the philosophers or Mr. Einstein when I speak of 
things being related—I mean merely that many activities grow up around 
the same object such as the family, the church, tennis, shoe making, and 
so on. Let us stop and look at any habit system at random, such as shoe 
making for example. 


Shoe making, in the old days, meant, first the rearing of cattle, then 
slaughtering them, then taking the hides to the tan yard. In the tan yard, 
oak bark was ground up in a horse-driven mill. Vats were dug in the 
ground, the vats were filled with water and the tan bark was thrown into 
the vats. Then the hides were dropped into the vats and the tannic acid 
coming from the oak bark caused the fur to drop off. This is called tan- 
ning the leather. After the hides were taken from the vats, they were 


PERSONALTRY 219 


washed and put through a process of drying and treating. Lasts had to 
be made for the customers’ shoes, leather had to be cut up and shaped over 
the lasts. Soles had to be sewed on. It is needless to enumerate every 
operation that had to be gone through before a finished pair of shoes could 
result. On my grandfather’s place there was a man who knew every detail 
of every one of these operations and actually performed them. I would 
call all of the acts connected with shoe making (of course the group of acts 
differs considerably from one decade to another because of the specializa- 
tion going on in labor) the shoe making habit system. You can easily 
understand that if we broke that system up into the separate activities we 
should need something like a thousand divisions on a chart just to describe 
shoe making organization. And to make our chart complete and service- 
able in helping us to predict something about the future behavior of an 
individual’s shoe making activities, we should have to show the age at which 
each of these habits began to form and their history from that time up to 
the present time. This whole study would give us the life history of that 
individual’s shoe making habits, 


Now let us turn to another complex system of habits. In talking 
about the personality of an individual we often hear the phrase, “He is a 
deeply religious man.” What does that mean? It means that the individ- 
ual goes to church on Sunday, that he reads the Bible daily, that he says 
grace at the table, that he sees to it that his wife and children go with him 
to church, that he tries to convert his neighbor into becoming a religious 
man and that he engages in many hundreds of other activities all of which 
are called parts of a modern Christian’s religion. Let us put all of these 
separate activities together and call them the religious habit system of the 
individual. Now each of these separate activities making up this system 
has a dating back in the individual’s past and a history from that point to 
the age of 24 where we are taking the cross section. For example, he 
learned the little prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” at 214. This habit 
was put away at 6 and the Lord’s Prayer took its place. Later on, if he 
entered the Episcopal faith, he read the printed prayers. If a Baptist, 
Methodist or Presbyterian, he made up his own prayers. At 18 years of 
age, having certain organization in public speaking, he began to “lead” in 
prayer meeting. At 4 years of age, he began to look at pictures in the 
Bible and to have the Bible stories read to him and told to him. He began 
to go to Sunday School at this time and to memorize certain biblical pas- 
sages. Soon he was able to read the Bible through and to memorize whole 
books of it. Again it is far too complex a task for us to attempt to take 
each of the strands of this religious organization and to trace out its begin- 
ning and its genetic history. 


220 BEHAVIORISM 


So far we have discussed in detail only two of these systems, but the 
cross section at 24 years of age would show many thousands of such sys- 
tems. You are already familiar with many of them, such as the marital 
habit system, the parental system, the public speaking system, the thought 
systems of the profound thinker, the eating system, the fear system, the 
love system, the rage system. All of these are broad general classifica- 
tions, of course, and should be split up into very much smaller systems, 
but even these divisions will serve to give you a conception of the kinds of 
facts we are trying to present. Let us draw a diagram to help us hold all 
of these facts together (Fig. 23). 


Possibly you are already impatient to know what all this has to do 
with personality. I define personality as the sum of activities that can be 
discovered by actual observation. of behavior over a long enough time to 
give reliable information. In other words, personality is but the end prod- 
uct of our habit systems. Our procedure in studying personality 1s the 
making and plotting of a cross section of the actwity stream, Among-= 
these activities, however, there are dominant systems in the manual field 
(occupational), in the laryngeal field (great talker, raconteur, silent 
thinker) and in the visceral field (afraid of people, shy, given to outbursts, 
having to be petted, and in general what we call emotional). These domi- 
nating systems are obvious, easy to observe, and they serve as the basis for 
most of the rapid judgments we make about the personalities of individ- 
uals. It is upon the basis of these few dominant systems that we classify 
personalities. 


This reduction of personality to things which can be seen and observed 
objectively possibly will not square very well with the sentimental attach- 
ments you have for the word personality. It would fit much more easily 
into your present organization if I did not define the word personality 
and merely characterized people by saying, “He has a commanding 
personality,” “She has an appealing and charming personality,” “He has a 
most disagreeable personality.” But just come to earth a minute and think 
about this a little. What do you mean by a commanding personality? Isn’t 
it generally that the individual speaks in an authoritative kind of way, that 
he has a rather large physique and that he is a little taller than you are? 


Another factor that does not come out in the activity chart is this— 
personality judgments usually are not based purely on the life chart of the 
individual whose personality is being studied. If the person studying the 
personality of another were free from slants and if accurate allowance 
could be made for the effects of his own past habit systems, he would be 
able to make an objective study. But none of us has this kind of freedom. 
We are all dominated by our past and our judgments of other people are 


PERSONALITY 221 


‘Cross Section of Organization 
at 24ycars = Personality at 
24 ycars 

24 Years 


Shoe Maki 
Hasut ‘Gane 


General Information 
Habit System 


Special Fear 
Habit System 
Wupersiitions -Feara Ete) 


Persona! 
Habit System 
(Ores: Table manacrs-ete) 


Recreation 
Habit System 





Fig. 23. Rough diagram to illustrate what the behaviorist means by “person- 
ality” and to show how it develops. In examining this diagram refer also to the 
diagram illustrating the stream of activity on page 106. The central thought in the 
diagram is that personality is made up of dominant habit systems (only a few of 
these are shown in the 24-year-old cross section—there are really many hundreds). 
Note that the cross section at 24 years of age reveals shoemaking as one of the domi- 
nant vocational habit systems and that the shoemaking habit system is made up of 
separate habits, A, B, C, D and E. All of these separate habits are put on at differ- 
ent ages. 


All the other habit systems—for instance, the religious, the patriotic, etc.— 
should have similar lines extending backward into the adolescence, youth and in- 
fancy of the individual in order to make them complete. For the sake of clearness, 
we have omitted them. 


always clouded by difficulties in our own personality. “For example, I 
spoke above of a ‘dominating’ personality and you nodded your head in 
agreement. Under the present system of rearing children the father is 
usually reacted to as though he were a large, powerful man, a kind of 
superhuman brute who must be obeyed instantly or punishment will be 
either threatened or applied. Hence you are easily liable, when an individ- 
ual possessing these characteristics comes into the room, to fall under his 


pea BEHAVIORISM 


‘spell.’ This means nothing more to the behaviorist than an expression of 
the fact that people who act like your father still have the power to make 
you behave like a child. It would not be difficult for me to pick out any 
of these cherished convictions you hold about personality and show it up in 
its true light. 


In presenting personality in this way, I think it should become clearer 
to you now how the situation we are in dominates us always and releases 
one or another of these all-powerful habit systems. For example, the ring- 
ing of the Angelus stops the reapers in the field, breaks in on their manual 
systems and throws them for the time being under the dominance of their 
religious habit systems. In general, we are what the situation calls for— 
a respectable person before our preacher and our parents, a hero in front 
of the ladies, a teetotaler in one group, a bibulous good fellow in another. 


One other thing the activity chart fails to show—and one which is 
of the very greatest importance. In developing so many hundreds and 
thousands of habit systems it is almost inevitable that these systems must 
conflict at one time or another. Thus it comes about that one stimulus may 
call out, or partially call out, two opposed types of action in the same mus- 
cular and glandular group. Inaction, fumbling, trembling, etc., may result. 
In certain cases there are apparently almost permanent conflicts, conflicts 
of such extent and of such magnitude that a psychopathological individual 
results, I shall develop this farther on, 


In a perfectly integrated (!) individual the following events happen: 
As soon as a situation begins to call for the dominance of a certain habit 
system, the whole body begins to unlock: the tensions in every set of 
striped and unstriped muscles not to be used in the immediately forthcom- 
ing action are released so as to free all of the striped and unstriped mus- 
cles and glands of the body for the habit system now needed. Only the 
one habit system the operation of which is called for can work at the maxi- 
mum efficiency. The whole individual thus becomes ‘expressed,’ his whole 
personality is ‘engrossed,’ in the act he is doing. 


May I diverge here just a moment to say that this way of looking at 
the dominance of habit systems removes from the psychology of the behav- 
iorist any need of the term attention? Attention is merely then, with us, 
synonymous with the complete dominance of any one habit system, be that 
a verbal habit system, a manual habit system or a visceral one. “Distrac- 
tion of attention,’ on the other hand, is merely an expression of the fact 
that the situation does not immediately lead to dominance of any one habit 
system, but first to one and then to the other. The individual starts to do 


3 


PERSONALITY 223 


one thing but falls under the partial dominance of another stimulus which 
partially frees another habit system. This leads to a conflict in the use of 
certain muscle groups. A fumbling of speech may result, a fumbling with 
the hands or the body may result, or an insufficient amount of energy may 
be released for use of the muscle groups. Some examples are these: Just 
as you are taking the high jump your schoolboy friend derides you; when 
you are just fixing to take your swing in golf somebody speaks; when you 
are deeply engaged in thinking out a problem the water begins to drip in 
the bathroom: action is interfered with or even fails altogether. TIllustra- 
tions of the attempted double and triple (and sometimes multiple) domi- 
nance of habit systems are very numerous. For these reasons the behavior- 
ist feels that the term “attention” has no application in psychology and is 
just another confession of our inability to think clearly, and to keep mys- 
tery out of psychological terms. We like to keep mystery in so we can use 
it on a rainy day—when we are ill or low or particularly dissatisfied with 
what we are getting out of this existence of ours. Then we begin to think 
that since everything is footless here, there must be something somewhere 
else. 


How to Study Personality 


In youth personality changes rapidly :—Naturally if personality is but 
a cross section at any given age of the complete organization of an individ- 
ual, you can see that this cross section must change at least slightly every 
day—-but not too rapidly for us to get a fair picture from time to time. 
Personality changes most rapidly in youth when habit patterns are form- 
ing, maturing and changing. Between 15 and 18 a female changes from 
a child toa woman. At 15 she is but the playmate of boys and girls of her 
own age. At 18 she becomes a sex object to every man. After 30 person- 
ality changes very slowly owing to the fact, as we brought out in our study 
of habit formation, that by that time most individuals, unless constantly 
stimulated by a new environment, are pretty well settled into a humdrum 
way of living. Habit patterns become set. If you have an adequate pic- 
ture of the average individual at 30 you will have it with few changes for 
the rest of that individual’s life—as most lives are lived. A quacking, 
gossiping, neighbor-spying, disaster-enjoying woman of 30 will be, unless 
a miracle happens, the same at 40 and still the same at 60. 


Different Ways of Studying Personality 


Most people pass their judgments on the personalities of their associ- 
ates without ever having made a real study of the individual. In our rapidly 
shifting life we often have to make these rapid judgments. But we get into 


224 | BEHAVIORISM 


a habit of making superficial estimates and we often do people a serious 
injury as a result. Sometimes we pride ourselves on being able to make 
rapid diagnoses of personalities. We pride ourselves on knowing at first 
sight whether we are going to like a person or not and on never changing 
our judgments. This means all too often that the person under this super- 
ficial kind of observation does some one or two things which do not square 
with our own particular slants and bents, hence our judgments are not real 
conclusions about personality at all but are really an exposé of our own 
particular pet aversions which must never be run afoul of. The real ob- 
server of personality tries to keep himself out of the picture and to observe 
the other individual in an objective way. 


Assuming that we are all careful observers of personality, that we are 
pretty free from sensitive spots ourselves and are really seeking to get a 
true estimate of the personality of any given individual, what shall we do 
to gain this information? Here are a few ways of going about our quest: 


(1) By studying the educational chart of the individual; (2) by 
studying the individual’s achievement chart; (3) by using psychological 
tests; (4) by studying the spare time and recreation record of the indi- 
vidual; (5) by studying the emotional makeup of the individual under 
the practical situations of daily living. There is no rapid way of studying 
the behavior or psychological makeup of individuals. ‘There are various 
psychological fakers in the field who believe there are such shortcuts but 
I shall attempt to prove to you farther on that their methods are unpro- 
ductive of any satisfactory results. 


Let us take up these various ways of studying personality. In no 
sense do I claim that the behaviorist has any definite scientific system for 
studying personality. He goes about the study in a practical, commonsense, 
observational way. 


(1) Studying the educational chart of the individual :—Considerable 
information can be gathered about the personality of an individual by chart- 
ing his educational career. Did he finish his grade school, or did he drop 
out at 12 years of age? Why did he drop out? Economic pressure? Was 
it to seek adventure? Did he finish high school? Did he continue to the 
bitter end of college and graduate? It speaks well for his work habits, if 
not for his intelligence, if he did stick it out. Going through college today 
is like going through with a foot race—you must finish if you start. I 
somehow need to be convinced that a man’s work habits are an asset to him 
if when he comes up for a position I find that his chart shows that he start- 
ed college and then dropped out. I look upon college as a place to grow up 
in—a place for breaking nest habits; as a place for learning how to make 


PERSONALTOY, Zen 


oneself friendly: for acquiring a certain savoir faire; as a place for 
learning how to keep one’s clothes pressed and one’s person looking neat; 
as a place in which to learn how to be polite in a lady’s or a gentleman’s 
presence—in a word a place in which to find how to use leisure and to find 
culture. Finally it should be a place where the student can learn respect 
for thinking and possibly even learn how to think. If it fails in these 
respects, college is a failure indeed. The manual and verbal habits put on 
there are rarely carried through life. I spent four years in undergraduate 
work. During all those years I ‘took’ Greek and Latin. Today I couldn’t 
write the Greek alphabet or read Xenophon’s Anabasis to save my life. I 
couldn’t read a page of Virgil or even Caesar’s Commentaries if food, sex 
and shelter depended upon it. I studied history faithfully and I couldn’t 
name ten presidents or give ten important dates in history. I couldn’t 
summarize the Declaration of Independence or tell what the Mexican War 
was about. 


And yet with all the fault we have to find with colleges, college bred 
men in business (just as they were in war) are uniformly more successful, 
receive fewer hard knocks, than the non-college men, and are generally 
more likable persons. There are many exceptions to this rule, however, and 
the lack of a college education does not always mean that the individual is 
a boor, or that he is lacking in the equipment for a successful life. 


(2) Studying the achievement chart of the individual:—In my 
opinion, one of the most important elements in the judging of personality, 
character and ability, is the history of the individual’s yearly achievements. 
We can measure this objectively by charting the length of time the individ- 
ual stayed in his various positions and the yearly increases he received in 
his earnings. The boy or man who has changed his job twenty times at 
30 without definite improvement at each change, will probably change it 
twenty times more before he is 45. If I owned a flourishing commercial 
business I should not want to employ a man for a responsible position at 
the age of 30 who had not earned or was not earning at least $5000 per 
year. I should confidently expect such a man to be earning still less at the 
age of 40. No hard and fast rule can be drawn—there are exceptions. 
But certainly yearly increase in responsibilities and yearly increase in 
salary are important factors in the progress of an individual. 


In a similar way, if the individual is a writer, we should want to draw 
a curve of the prices he gets for his stories year by year. If from our lead- 
ing magazines he receives the same average price per word for his stories 
at 30 that he received when he was 24, the chances are he is a hack writer 
and will never be anything but that. In the literary and artistic fields, as 


226 BEHAVIORISM 


well as that of business, we must judge men and women from the point of 
view of achievement, measured by whatever standards you will, if you 
wish to be able to predict just how good an organic machine each is and 
just how well that machine will run in the future. 


(3) Psychological tests as a method of studying personality :— 
Psychology, since the work of Minsterberg began in this country, is at the 
present time reaping just such a harvest as one might expect. It has made 
too many extravagant claims—that it can save industry seventy millions a 
year and that it should be the bright and guiding star in the selection of 
employees and in the placement and promotion of employees after enter- 
ing office or factory. These claims have been made by some of our leading 
psychologists. Business organizations of today have become leery of these 
claims, partly because the psychologists have been too ambitious and have 
tried to walk before they learned to crawl, and partly because business 
houses have not been willing to wait until the psychologist could develop 
his methods for the particular business he was studying. Business firms 
have been at fault, too, not only because of unwillingness to wait for results 
which are necessarily slow in coming, but because they have not been will- 
ing to expend money on psychological work. They are willing to wait in- 
definitely for the results of the work of the chemists and the physicists, but 
they expect the psychologist to come in and, by some legerdemain and by 
some offhand pronunciamento, to settle the problems of industry which 
business men have been unable to settle by other means during the whole 
course of the existence of industry. I have in mind here, naturally, selec- 
tion of personnel, placement and advancement of personnel after it has 
been chosen, efficiency of the worker, and finally happiness and content- 
ment of the worker—using these last two terms as they are popularly used. 
Certainly, in all these, personality in our sense is the chief factor. 


Psychology has made some progress in taking cross sections of voca- 
tional organization. Wecan test, quickly, a man’s arithmetical ability, his 
general range of information, whether or not he knows Latin or Greek, 
whether or not a woman can take 60 words of shorthand a minute, whether 
or not she can write a hundred words a minute for 40 minutes with rela- 
tively few errors and typewrite with even impression, whether or not an in- 
dividual can drive an automobile over a tortuous course without striking 
stakes or other automobiles, and the like. Many other different vocational 
tests are in the process of being perfected. I expect to see many advances 
made in tests of this kind. 


But it must be remembered always that vocational tests show only 
sheer ability to accomplish such and such things in a given time and with 


PERSONALITY, 227 


a given number of errors. But sheer ability to do certain things tells us 
little about the systematic work habits of the individual. Suppose he is 
efficient when actually hungry or in need of shelter—is he efficient after 
feeding and housing? Has he so many personal affairs to attend to that 
watching the clock becomes one of his liabilities? This is true of many 
individuals. For them, nine o’clock comes too early and five o’clock too 
late. Once I had to write a little brief on the chief factors in judging 
men for jobs. I wrote that if I had to select an individual on the basis of 
any one characteristic, I should choose work habits—actual love of work, 
willingness to take an overload of work, to work longer than actual speci- 
fied hours and to clean the chips up after the work is done. These things, 
I find, have to be drilled into the individual pretty early or he will never 
yet them. No psychological test so far devised will bring out the strength 
or weakness of the individual in these particulars. 


(4) Studying the spare time and recreation record of individuals :— 
Every individual must have some form of recreation. With some, recrea- 
tion is found in reading, with others in games, with others in sports. Still 
others find it in sex, in alcohol, in fast driving; others in being with their 
families; and then there is the rare group quite often mentioned in the 
newspapers, which finds recreation in work—but, like the report of Mark 
Twain’s death, these statements are often “grossly exaggerated.” 


I believe that sports and recreation are quite revealing. We can look 
upon certain sports as distinct assets, others as liabilities. The speed mania 
leads to accidents; the sex mania into many and difficult complications ; 
alcohol mania into organic disturbance, unfitness for work and finally into 
actual disease. 


Outdoor activity leads to physical fitness, to keenness in competition, to 
steadiness in coordination. I always feel more favorably disposed in going 
over the record of a man, if I find that he has one form of outdoor recrea- 
tion in which he excels, be it golf, tennis, canoeing, fishing, hunting, box- 
ing or track. 


I search almost as eagerly for proficiency in indoor activities, such as 
cards, chess, dancing, singing and the playing of musical instruments. I 
believe that it is difficult for a man or woman to acquire proficiency in a 
recreational activity and not at the same time have ability along bread- 
earning, vocational lines. Then again, it is difficult for a man to achieve 
proficiency in sports who is not friendly and who cannot get along well 
with people. So let us admit, tentatively at any rate, that sports and recre- 
ations are probably indicative of personality, and that the individual’s record 
along sport and recreational lines is worth studying. 


228 BEHAVIORISM 


(5) Studying the emotional makeup of the individual under practic- 
al conditions :—The study of all the factors so far considered, such as the 
educational achievements of the individual, his work achievements and what 
he does in his spare time, does not give the whole personality story. An 
individual might be successful in all his work habits, both manual and 
verbal, and still he might be a terrible bore, unwelcome at dinner, unwel- 
come at golf or in traveling ; he might be mean, niggardly, unfriendly, over- 
bearing in his way of treating other people—in general, a terrible person 
to live with or near. I mean by this that certain people are inadequately 
developed along emotional lines. They are emotional failures. Observa- 
tion helps us to gauge this. If we do not quite have the courage to invite 
this person to our home or to visit him in his, and thus get into a position 
to observe him for ourselves, we can find out how many friends he has and 
how long those friendships have endured. One can almost state positively 
that if he has no large circle of friénds and no friends of long stand- 
ing, he will be a difficult person to be near always—no matter how well 
he may do his work. Success on the emotional side is never a safe guide, 
however, as to whether a man will succeed in business or in professional 
work. How often have we heard the expression “He is God’s worst fool 
but even God likes him”? The record of work habits and achievement 
always must be read along with the emotional chart. 


In judging personalities, we find it much more difficult to get any cross 
section of habits about lying, and about honesty and other so-called 
moral virtues. There is no way of finding these thifles out except by look- 
ing into the history of the individual and checking up rather closely on his 
life. This, however, can be done only by carrying out an extensive obser- 
vation among his friends and by observing his behavior for a considerable 
length of time. If people would write honest letters about other people, 
our judgments of the emotional makeup of an individual could be much 
more safely formed. But most of us are too cowardly to write honest 
letters, hence letters of recommendation are rarely worth the paper they 
are written upon. I doubt that we shall ever be able to reach valuable 
judgments on the emotional phases of personality—such as the individual’s 
ability to get along with others, whether he works well under a heavy load 
or under a slight load, whether he works better alone or in a crowd, whether 
he is slovenly in his work habits, whether he keeps up with his work or 
merely conceals the things he hasn’t done, whether he works better under 
encouragement or under the lash—unless we provide a preliminary school 
where the individual actually can be kept under close observation for a 
definite period of time. Granting that the individual has considerable so- 
called intellectual ability (and by that we mean nothing more than con- 


PERSONALT EY, 229 


siderable manual and verbal organization), he often falls down in lus 
various jobs in life largely through lack of visceral organization—that is, 
lack of well-balanced emotional training. You probably could understand 
this better if I used your terms—such as, the individual is “sensitive,” 
“touchy,” “crusty,” “vindictive,” “overbearing,” “seclusive,’ “exclusive,” 
“cocky,” “takes criticism unkindly,’ and the like. To bring out these 
emotional factors, the individual must be placed under certain situations, 
as we Saw in our study of the infants. You see, these are really unorgan- 
ized, infantile types of reaction—carry-overs from infancy. Such situa- 
tions, in the ordinary course of a week’s or a month’s work, may present 
themselves infrequently, hence the individual must be watched for a con- 
siderable time. I think that business houses are more or less convinced of 
this and that they are prepared to give longer preliminary training than 
formerly and to accept the relatively large labor turn-over that such a 
system involves, 


Are There Any Shortcuts in the Study of Personality 


_ Can we learn anything about personality by “interviewing” the sub- 
ject? We can learn something about an individual in a personal interview. 
Personal interviews, however, should be rather extended, and more than 
one interview should be given. During an interview many little things 
are apparent which a close observer may note and profit by. The voice of 
the person under observation, his gestures, his gait, his personal appear- 
ance—all of these I think are significant. You can tell in a moment 
whether the individual is or is not a cultivated individual, whether or not 
he has good manners. One individual will come in for an interview and 
will keep his hat on his head and his cigar in his mouth; another will be so 
scared that he cannot even talk; still another will be so boastful that you 
want to escape his presence immediately. 


Then there are many little things about a person’s clothes that will 
show whether or not he has neat and cleanly personal habits. If he wears 
a soiled collar, if his hands are soiled above the wrist, we have pretty good 
evidence that he is an unpleasant and uncleanly person to deal with. But 
personal interviews tell us nothing about work habits and nothing about the 
honesty of the individual, nothing about the steadfastness of his principles 
and nothing about his ability. Here again, as I brought out before, we 
have to fall back upon a study of the life history of the individual. 


Why is it, then, that office managers and the public generally believe 
that they can read personalities? Probably the main reason is that it flat- 
ters them to think that they can. It gives them a certain standing in the 


230 BEHAVIORISM 


circle in which they move. The reason they get away with it is that they 
cannot be checked up. If you wish to pick out an individual from a group 
applying for, say, a job as office boy, or for any other kind of job which 
does not require ability of a specialized kind, such as that of typewriting 
or stenography (where checking is possible), ‘the chances are fifty-fifty or 
better that you will pick him out right if you pick him blindfolded. Our 
standards of efficiency are not very high and hence every office is crowded 
with individuals able just to hold their jobs but who could not hold them 
if work were better standardized. If, however, the office manager is really 
keen, as many are, and engages the applicants in conversation, puts them 
up against certain verbal questions of a searching kind and carefully notes 
their answers, there are signs which are helpful to him. But at best the 
selection of personnel today is little better than a hit or miss affair. This 
is the reason the psychological faker gets along so easily. 


The Shortcuts the Psychological Faker Takes in Studying Personality 


Extravagant as are the claims made by the legitimate psychologist for 
the application of psychology to the study of personality, there is a large 
group of parasites in psychology which I have been in the habit of calling 
the “faker” element. Today among the fakers must be included those dis- 
tinguished gentlemen from across the water who claim to maintain com- 
munication with our departed spirits, who claim to be able to demonstrate 
the existence of personal ectoplasm, and to have demonstrated that there 
are individuals who by some mysterious force can disturb the physical 
balance of ordinary objects around us. Mr. Houdini, I think, is probably 
our best antidote for the claims of such individuals. But it is the general 
standing of men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who 
are well-meaning but ignorant of psychological matters, that unfortunately 
lends support to this ever-increasing group of plain parasites in the field of 
psychology. I think that with men like Lodge and Conan Doyle, “faker” is 
not the right term to use. Let us call them misguided enthusiasts. Both 
of them are growing old and have not yet lost the childish fear of having to 
leave this world. Probably the greatest harm they do is to cause the oc- 
casional suicide of a poor neurotic individual who gets wrought up about 
the happy state he would be in if only his ectoplasm could free itself from 
the body and leave this rigid, severe and unkind world. 


The faker who distresses the behaviorist most and who is doing most 
damage in the universe at the present time is the one who offers his services 
to industry. This group is taking hundreds of thousands of dollars for its 
so-called services in selecting men for office and factory and for giving 
character and personality readings on individuals already employed. I at- 


BERSONALID EN ann 


tended a lecture given by one of this group not long ago. He described the 
several hundred points on the face by means of which he could read the 
character of each individual and tell for what he was fitted. He claimed 
in this lecture practically never to have made a failure in over a quarter of 
a million of such readings. At the end of his lecture I asked him the 
modest question, whether he would agree to pick out three “feeble-minded” 
male individuais and three normal male individuals of 16 years of age, if 
I would bring the six to his office. I did not ask him, mind you, to tell me 
what they were fitted for, nor to give me the finer points of their characters 
and personalities. I just asked him to determine the brute facts as to 
whether each individual was “all there” or was feeble-minded. Surely the 
ability to do this is the first step in reading character and in selecting per- 
sonality. The question ought not to have insulted the “scientist,” but he 
became very angry, grew quite red in the face, began to tremble and to 
jerk, and intimated that I was there for the purpose of heckling him. 


I had a similar experience with another gentleman. I once quite frank- 
ly attempted to expose certain gentlemen for claiming to be able to read 
character from photographs. In that article I intimated that a man who 
would claim to be able to read character from photographs was——well, to 
say the least that could be said about him—mistaken. One of the gentle- 
men was quite hurt and went into a long dissertation to explain that not 
everyone could do it, but that in his organization there were several men 
who were past masters in the art, and he sincerely offered to put up a thou- 
sand dollars for the expense of an investigation. The conditions we set for 
making the observation were quite simple and straightforward: 


(1) That we should be allowed to go to a Home for the Friendless 
and pick out a group of men who had been bums and ne’er-do- 
wells from infancy and whose records were known; 


(2) That we should go to the prisons and pick out a group of men 
who had been criminals from youth to adulthood ; 


(3) That we should select a group of very eminent, scholarly men 
whose work had never brought them into such notoriety that 
their photographs were continually adorning our morning news- 
papers. 


Furthermore, we were to shave, bathe and clothe properly in evening clothes 
all three groups, including the college professors, and to photograph them 
under standard conditions. Certainly these conditions were fair. They 
were objected to, however, by the so-called photograph character analysts 
who were supposed to be adept in the reading of photographs, and so the 
experiment was off. 


2oL BEHAVIORISM 


The third type of faker is the one who uses general physical charac- 
teristics as his guide. Notwithstanding the fact that we have worked for 
years to correlate color of the skin, shape of the fingers, color of the eyes 
and hair, texture of the hair, and the like, with certain general types of 
behavior and with the general attainments of individuals, we have never 
been able to get any positive evidence that such correlations exist. Yet 
these individuals, with no training in scientific psychology and without the 
aid of a pyschological laboratory, claim to be able to pick out executives, 
to pick out salesmen, with practically unerring accuracy. One of the inter- 
esting things about this gold brick movement is the fact that some of our 
reputable magazines have carried their advertisements for years. Those 
same magazines, if they were allowing advertisements of certain grocery 
and drug products to adorn their pages, would scrutinize each statement 
with the utmost carefulness—indeed they would subject all doubtful claims 
to serious tests in their own kitchens and in their own laboratories. 


Psychologists have convinced themselves that there is not a single cor- 
relation that can be made at present between any single physical character- 
istic or group of physical characteristics and any single type of ability or 
types of ability. The most that we should be willing to say, by looking at 
a photograph or by a mere static view of an individual in repose, is that 
he looks physically fit, that he has two arms and two legs, that he is prob- 
ably not a Cretin and is possibly not an idiot. I certainly should not attempt 
to go so far as to say whether or not he is “feeble-minded.” Even an hour’s 
conversation sometimes leads us astray on the simplest things. As an 
illustration, I shall give this personal experience: There was one individual 
with whom I talked, not so long ago, for twenty minutes over the telephone, 
and whom I later interviewed for half an hour. He was a well-educated 
man of no mean ability. He seemed under quite a little pressure, but a 
great many of us are under pressure, especially on first interviews. Two 
minutes before he left he pulled out ten checks for a thousand dollars each 
and began to tell me that he was making a thousand dollars a day re- 
pairing Singer Sewing Machines. Thus, even at the end of 50 minutes, 
I had to revise my judgment and conclude that the man was insane, a con- 
clusion which I later confirmed by looking up his record. 


Where I think the psychological fakers are doing harm, exclusive of 
the great economic waste in using them, is in the prevention of the estab- 
lishment and spread of scientific methods. The business man is made to 
feel that the selection, placing and promotion of personnel ought to be done 
by some kind of prestidigitation or even by the use of miraculous methods. 
Finally, they disturb the worker himself. I cannot tell you how many times 
I have had individuals come to me seriously disturbed about their vocations. 


PERSONALIVY 233 


They were doing well in their work, but some characterologist had informed 
them that their future lay in grand opera, in diplomatic work or in some 
field other than the one in which they were working, and they felt that they 
ought to give up their present jobs in order to go after this unknown, un- 
tried and, therefore, roseate future. 


I wish I had time here to develop for you the operating methods of 
various other fakers. Just let me enumerate a few of the different types 
of fakers. The phrenologist is another rapid personality reader. ‘The 
bumps on your head, so he says, reveal everything to him; a bump means 
a development of a certain part of the brain in which a certain capacity or 
vocation resides. By charting the bumps, therefore, he charts the individ- 
ual’s abilities. Unfortunately, the bumps on the skull have nothing to do 
with the shape or the size of the brain. Indeed, a bump on the skull may 
mean a slight constriction of the cranial or brain cavity, because a bump 
sometimes works both ways—pushes both out and in. The brain as a rule, 
however, is smooth and is almost floating in a liquid. Besides, we have 
given up brain “‘faculties.”’ As I pointed out in an earlier lecture, we have 
given up even brain localization. Phrenology passed out of the interest of 
scientific men many, many decades ago. Neurology is the science which 
has taken its place, and neurology does not concern itself with psychological 
categories. 


Then we have the graphologists, those who would tell us by our hand- 
writing what our potentialities and characters are. The way we dot our 
i’s, cross our t’s, whether we leave our o’s open or not, the way we slant 
our letters, all are definite revealments of personality. Let us not be too 
hard upon them. It is an amusing avocation, this reading of character by 
signs. Certainly we can get something from the handwriting of an in- 
dividual—whether he is so extremely careless (or so emotionally disturbed) 
that he doesn’t finish words, whether or not he runs words together, 
whether or not he misspells, whether or not he fails to keep his lines 
straight, whether or not he writes hurriedly, and so on. In handwriting, 
of course, we have a definite product left behind by activity, and hence it 
may give us some kind of cue as to the person’s character. Several 
psychologists have been studying it carefully and are still studying it, but so 
far the correlations they have found to exist between certain kinds of writ- 
ing and certain kinds of ability have been very sketchy and very insecurely 
grounded. One would expect a graphologist at least to tell the handwriting 
of a man from that of a woman, but even this is a far more difficult task 
than it is ordinarily considered. In going over a large number of names 
not long ago, where only initials were given, I thought that a great many 
of the names were written by men, so we wrote letters to find out. About 


234 BEHAVIORISM 


80% of the names that, from the handwriting, I judged to be men’s names 
turned out to be the names of women! 


Summary 


This study of the so-called normal personality of other people should 
convince us that close observation of behavior over a long period of time 
is our only way of reaching conclusions about personality. Short observa- 
tion and personal interviews reveal some things, to be sure. Vocational 
tests and intelligence tests reveal many others. But only long, sustained 
observation of individuals at work and at play in the complex situations of 
daily life can ever yield data on general work habits (neatness, assiduity, 
the taking of temporary overload and the like), on the so-called moral 
habits (honesty, loyalty, freedom from excesses, etc.) and on the emotional 
habits (temper, sensitiveness, exclusiveness, shyness, exhibition, inferiority, 
and the like). 


Naturally, anyone not “‘feeble-minded” can gather information about 
the personality of others, but the better trained the psychological observer 
and the freer he is from twists in his own character, the more secure are 
his observations. 


You may argue that all my illustrations have been chosen with refer- 
ence to the occupational side of life. While this is true, the fact remains 
that these commonsense methods work equally well in the selection of our 
friends, our wives and our husbands. One of the terrible tragedies of 
modern life is the speed with which young men and young women meet 
and mate. Under the dominance of visceral stimuli (sexual) no sane ob- 
servation is possible. Mating takes place, personalities clash, and then the 
divorce court is left if you have the courage to face it. I have no solution 
to offer, but it does seem little short of tragic that in this greatest event of 
our lives there is no real way of testing out how two personalities can exist 
side by side under the close association of marriage—except by marrying 
first and finding out afterwards. In my consulting work, I find that the 
greatest trouble comes from colossal failure in sex adjustment. Two indi- 
viduals marrying and living under such close and narrow confines as mar- 
riage brings, cannot live happily together without a real and genuine sex 
adjustment. Other elements of personality have no chance to function 
where there is stark hunger (from which about 80% of the wives suffer). 
In approximately 25 consultations with young married couples, in the past 
two years, I found only one who had made a real sex adjustment. The 
difficulty in nearly every case was a behavior difficulty of one kind or 
another. Nothing was physiologically wrong with either the husband or 


PERSONAL TY 235 


wife. Bad training, wrong organization about sex, were the principal 
causes of trouble. In nearly every case sane instruction brings adjustment. 
The least society can do is to give these prospective young couples proper 
instruction before marriage. Getting proper instruction is difficult, how- 
ever. The family doctor and the parents unfortunately are usually the 
most dangerous of instructors. I have yet to meet the general practitioner 
or the parent whom I should like to see instruct a child of mine, 


I mention these things because, first, I want to see all phases of 
personality have a chance to function in the marital situation. They can- 
not if sex hunger is present. Secondly, unless such problems are faced 
by the younger generation, the institution of marriage, which really has 
never been tried out by society (and I mean by this that men and women 
have no organization about being married.and they nearly always spoil 
marriage in trying to learn how to be married), will receive some severe 
assaults in the next few years, especially in our larger cities. 


But to return to our summary of personality. What do we do with 
personality judgments when once we have them? We hire and fire the 
personnel in industry on the basis of them—-we promote and demote with 
them to guide us. They are at the basis of our friendships, our business 
associations, our social gatherings. It is a brave hostess who will bring to- 
gether clashing personalities. We choose our mates and leave them on no 
other basis. 


In a sense, we carry double entry bookkeeping in our heads about 
every friend and associate we have. On one page in black ink we tab- 
ulate each one’s assets; on the opposite page in red ink we put down 
each one’s liabilities. As the association continues, we fill the pages up. 
Every now and then we, so to speak, balance the account. When the 
figures in red become overpowering, we have to close out the account. 


As I have stated before, all too often we fail to keep books on our 
own personality. At least we fail to keep a double entry system. We 
put down only assets and leave out the liabilities. Hence in keeping books 
on our associates we often enter our own liabilities on their liability page. 


Some of the Weaknesses of Our Adult Personality 


Human nature has so many weaknesses in it, that it is difficult to make 
a start in pointing out the chief failures. Indeed, as one observes human 
life more and more closely, one comes to the point of view that what often 
seems to be strength is but one of the individual’s chief points of weakness. 
Let us look at weaknesses in personality under a few such headings as (1) 


230 BEHAVIORISM 


our inferiorities, (2) our susceptibility to flattery, (3) our constant strife 
to become kings and queens, and finally (4) the carrying over of our child- 
hood heritages. 


(1) Our inferiorities:—I need to discuss very little today the steps 
by which we “organize” our inferiorities into systems. The psychoanal- 
ysts have done this for us. We would phrase what happens in scientific 
terms, however. Most of us have groups of reactions developed which do 
cover up, conceal and hide our inferiorities. Shyness is one form, silence 
is another, outbursts of temper are another, advanced stands on moral or 
social questions are other very common forms. The most selfish of in- 
dividuals has a well-organized verbal scheme which hides his selfishness 
from the uninitiated—the most “impure” of individuals often talks loudest 
of purity. The person who is often most easily a prey to temptation pro- 
claims most loudly the rules and regulations upon which he bases his stan- 
dards of ethics and conduct. Poor fellow, he is so weak he needs them to 
bolster himself up. Again, one of the outstanding examples is the fellow 
who, all but impotent, boasts loudest of his sex prowess. 


We likewise orgaryze habit systems that serve the purpose of conceal- 
ing our physical inferiorities. The little short man often talks loudly, 
dresses “loudly,’’ wears high-heeled shoes, is “cocky” and forward. In 
order to be seen at all he must act in an unusual way. Women try to bal- 
ance one thing off against another. Their faces may not be beautiful, but 
their forms are exquisite; their arms may be clumsy, but their legs are 
objects of admiration by discriminating artists. Nothing in their anatomy 
may be supreme—then they fall back upon style. When too fat to be 
stylish, they have wonderful cars to ride in, beautiful jewels, well appointed 
homes. 


Somehow most human beings can’t permanently face inferiority—nor 
are the analysts any exception. A great many of my friends are analysts. 
They can still be made angry when their theories are attacked or if someone 
challenges their superior powers as analysts. Who would have them differ- 
ent? All I ask from anybody when he has to boast or to play up the good 
side a little is that he display a sense of humor—admit, at least by a sign, 
that it is as necessary for him to do this once in a while as it is for the baby 
to have its milk bottle. Indeed, the origin of these so-called “compensa- 
tions” is infantile. We teach the child that he is ‘‘smart,” smarter than the 
neighbor’s child. We pet him, make much of him. The analysts call this 
expression of the “ego.” Not at all—it is merely an organized habit sys- 
tem built in at the mother’s knee. The parent’s own inferiorities start it. 
No matter how “dumb” her own child is, when the neighbor comes in she 


PERSONALITY, 237 


must find something in her little Reginald or Heloise that the neighbor’s 
child does not possess. If her child’s feet are large, maybe her hands are 
small and shapely. All the child hears from her beloved parents are praises 
for her good parts and no mention of her poor ones. The individual thus 
forms a verbal organization about her assets—can talk about them—but 
she never learns to talk about her liabilities. 


(2) Our susceptibility to flattery:—Observation of personality in 
male and female shows some weak spots in all our armor. If I had to give 
you just one weapon for piercing the armor of most individuals, that 
weapon would be dattery. Flattery has become an art, however. Only the 
well-schooled, and the graduates in the art should attempt to use it. I have 
already brought out for you the fact that most individuals have a group 
of dominating habit systems. It may be their religious habit systems, their 
moral habit systems, their vocational habit systems, their artistic habit 
systems, or others. If the individual is constantly flattered on his achieve- 
ments in these directions, the chances are good that the person trying to 
approach him will have success. Sometimes a five-minute conversation 
will give the keynote of this dominating organization. The anti-smoker, 
the strict prohibitionist, the efficiency bug, the money king, the speed and 
sex Mania organizations show up very quickly in conversation. Much 
observation has shown me that almost invariably when the skillful stranger 
makes the acquaintance of these individuals and approaches them on their 
weak side, the verdict is, “He is a remarkable fellow, agreeable, charming, 
quite intelligent. I think we ought to have him around again.” 


Often the vulnerable point in character is what the Freudians call an 
avoidance mechanism. For example, A does not like to hurt anybody’s 
feelings. Rather than do it, he yields not only his dollars but his principles. 
He will burden himself with the cares of other individuals and carry their 
woes around with him because he is too chicken-hearted to stand up and 
tell them what he thinks. 


I doubt very seriously that any man or woman is invulnerable on any 
commandment, on any code of honesty, on any lifelong settled conviction. I 
think the time was when invulnerability was a more nearly possible thing. 
Today conventions are so universally overstepped, religious mandates so 
often transgressed, business honesty and integrity so often a matter of 
legal decision, that all of us are vulnerable if and when approached long 
enough and hard enough and subtly enough on our weak side. This does 
not mean that you or I would rob a bank today, commit murder or rape, 
take undue advantage of our neighbor; yet almost invariably we do many 
so-called unethical things, given certain conditions. It often happens in 


238 BEHAVIORISM 


business and in the professions that as long as a man ahead of you is help- 
ful and useful to you, you are meticulous in giving him his due. He can 
do no wrong. You back him up, support him on every occasion. But when 
you reach him, when you begin to share the throne with him, you, without 
ever verbalizing it, somehow find your ear more attuned to faults. A 
strong visceral toning appears when you hear things not quite to his credit! 
Then again, when you pass him, you begin to wonder if your former rival 
cannot be replaced by a less expensive man. You rationalize this on the 
grounds of economy, thus killing two birds with one stone, strengthening 
your balance sheet and making your own throne more secure against the 
possible recrudescence of a former rival. 


I have no venom to display here against human nature. I am just 
trying to show you that our way of.acting in certain situations is almost 
automatic. Some of us know these kinds of weaknesses in ourselves and 
we are constantly on the watch for them. Others are not quite so well 
analyzed. They call it being human and forgive themselves on such 
grounds. Here is where I think psychology can be most helpful in every 
phase of human relationship. The old biblical saying which I shall para- 
phrase: First take out the beam from your own eye that you may see the 
mote in your fellow man’s eye, is a far more psychologically convincing 
maxim than the Golden Rule, or even Kant’s “Universal.” We know all 
too little about “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto 
you.” Most of us are pathological in certain directions; the other fellow 
is pathological in different directions. If you tried to do unto him 
as you would like to be done by, you would very often get into diffi- 
culties, sometimes of the most pronounced kinds! Again, take Kant’s uni- 
versal, ‘““Act by a maxim fit to become universal.’”’ With this ever-changing 
psychological world no maxim is fit to become universal. A maxim which 
would have worked in the Garden of Eden, would never have worked in 
the time of Caesar, nor would it work any better in 1925. But every man 
can watch his own way of acting and he will often be surprised when he 
comes to face the real stimuli that touch off his actions. Susceptibility to 
flattery, selfishness, avoiding difficult situations, unwillingness to show or 
to confess weakness, inadequacy or lack of knowledge, jealousy, fear of 
rivals, fear of being made the scapegoat, hurling criticism upon others to 
escape it oneselfi—make up an almost unbelievable part of our natures. The 
individual when he really faces himself is often almost (if not quite) over- 
come by what is revealed—infantile behavior, unethical standards, smoth- 
ered over by the thinnest veneer of rationalization. Nakedness of “soul” 
can be faced only by the truly brave. 


(3) Our constant strife to become kings and queens :—As the result 


PERSONALITY 239 


of our training at the hands of our parents, of the books we read and of 
the biographies of those around us, every man deems it his inalienable right 
to become a king and every woman a queen. All history breeds this in. 
Kings and queens are petted and made much of; kings and queens have 
things done for them; they get more food and better food; they get better 
shelter, more artistic shelter; they get more sex and greater aesthetic 
values in sex. It is in childhood that most of these things come to us. This 
is one reason why it is so hard to give up our childhood and, as a matter 
of fact, as I shall show you later on, we rarely do completely give it up. 
We try to carry over into everyday adult life the dominance we have put 
Over on our parents in our childhood. The labor leader who says, “Down 
with the capitalists and up with labor,” is just as anxious as any of us to 
be king. The capitalist who says, ‘Down with labor,” is just as eager 
either to become king or else to stay king. No one can object to this kind 
of strife. It is a part of life. There always has been and there always 
(until the behaviorists bring up all the children!) will be this kind of 
struggle for dominance. Every man ought to be a king and every woman 
a queen. They must learn, however, that their domains are restricted. The 
objectionable people in the world are those who want to be kings and 
queens but who will allow no one else to be regal. We notice this in the 
vested clergy, in business, in science. More than one professor has seen his 
bright pupil grow up beside him. One day a coolness comes, the professor 
finds a certain fault in his bright pupil’s technique or a weakness in his 
theory, and the weakness, on analysis, is where it diverges from the pro- 
fessor’s own theory. The professor becomes not quite so warm in his re- 
commendation to the president and the board of trustees. When it comes 
time for the bright pupil to get his professorship, at first no recommenda- 
tion is forthcoming. When colleagues insist, active recommendations against 
his bright pupil’s promotion are sent. The professor rationalizes his own 
course of conduct in the most devious ways. More than once we have seen 
a professor, genial, jovial in his relationships with his subordinates. So 
long as he stands on a pinnacle apart, so long does his good nature last. He 
gets a reputation for pushing the younger men, but let one get too near the 
throne and friendliness and geniality are swallowed up by the green-eyed 
monster jealousy. Many of our orthodoxies—codes of conduct, our rules 
of politeness—are built up for the purpose of letting him who is king and 
rule-maker remain king and rule-maker, 


(4) Infant Carry-overs the General Cause of Unhealthy Personalities 


The weaknesses in our personalities which we have just considered are 
but examples of the general fact that we carry over many organized habit 


240 BEHAVIORISM 


systems from our infancy and early youth into our adult life. Most of 
these systems, as I pointed out in Lecture 11, are of the unverbalized type 
—verbal correlates and substitutes are lacking. The individual cannot talk 
about them, certainly would deny that he has carried over his infantile 
behavior, yet the appropriate situation brings out their expression. These 
carry-overs are the most serious handicaps to a healthy personality. 


One of the systems we carry over is that of strong attachments (posi- 
tive conditionings) for one or more individuals in the home—mother, 
father, brother, sister—or some adult who played an important role in our 
upbringing. Too faithful attachments to objects, places, localities are often 
serious. The general name to apply to all such carry-overs is nest habits. 
The south especially develops them—‘“My family does so and so,” “No 
Smith was ever conquered,” ‘The Joneses never forget an insult.” Fami- 
lies belonging to the nobility have bred in them the same kind of systems. 
These habits are consolidated into family mottoes and coats of arms. Since 
marriage nearly always means the bringing of a stranger into the group, 
serious difficulties often arise before the stranger is accepted even by the 
wife or husband. This is one reason why there are so many blood feuds. 
Thus, owing to the fact that your father and mother bred these habits into 
you, and your father and mother had them similarly bred into them, we get 
infantilism as a kind of perpetual social inheritance. In a somewhat less 
insistent way racial habit systems are also bred into people. 


But we are interested in the growth of the individual, mainiy. Let us 
return to him. Suppose by the time you are 3 years of age your fond and 
doting mother has got you into the following ways of behaving. She waits 
on you hand and foot. You are an angel child and anything you do or say 
is perfectly wonderful. Your father must not correct you. Your nurse is 
always wrong if she scolds you. Three years later you start to school. You 
are a problem child all through. Soon you play hookey; your mother backs 
you up. You steal and lie repeatedly, and your teacher sends you home and 
closes the school to you. Your mother gets a tutor—but a tutor over whom 
she has the control. He educates you. You are ‘finished off’ by travel. 
One meets everywhere people of this kind. They cannot break their nest 
habits—they can never “make a go of it’ when the home quits petting 
them, When youth is gone they fall back on chronic invalidism. 


We should shed our childish habits yearly as the snake sheds its skin— 
not all at once like the snake, but gradually as the new situations caused by 
growth demand it. At three years of age the normal child has a well- 
organized 3-year-old personality—a system of habits that works well for 
that age. But as he progresses towards 4, some of the 3-year-old habits 


PERSONALITY 241 


must give way—baby talk has to be given up, personal habits have to 
change. At 4 the wetting of the bed, thumb-sucking, shyness at meeting 
strangers, failure to talk fluently will not be so lightly overlooked. Exhi- 
bitionism has to give way; the child is taught not to burst into a room and 
start a conversation regardless of whether others are talking. He must 
begin to dress himself, to take his bath unaided, to get up at night and go 
to the toilet if necessary, and to do thousands of other actions not expected 
of the 3-year-old. 


If only our home life were constructed so that 3-year habits could give 
way to 4-year habits without the infantile carry-over! But this cannot and 
never will happen until parents have fewer carry-overs from their own 
infancy—until they learn how to rear children. 


At other times in these lectures I have sketched for you what often 
results from carry-overs. From among the millions of ways in which they 
influence our adult life let me just select two or three from my own con- 
sulting experience. Owing to a mother’s too tender love, marriage is diffi- 
cult or impossible for the son—the mother objects to every choice made by 
the son. He finally marries and a family row occurs. This is temporarily 
patched up. Son and daughter-in-law, after a few days, come to live with 
the parents. Then the fat is in the fire. Then the son has two wives, his 
mother and his bride. This youth has to be remade—forced to lose this 
unnatural, but by him unnoted, mother conditioning. 


Again, a girl attached from infancy to her father, lives on until the 
age of 24 and does not marry. She finally marries. Because, she has, of 
course, never had sexual relations with her father, she will not have them 
with her husband. If she is forced to she breaks down. She may commit 
suicide or become insane to escape. 


Once again may I reiterate a thought often expressed before in these 
lectures? If from morning till night the average adult could chart in 
detail his verbal, manual and visceral behavior which is released by in- 
fantile carry-overs, he would be not only astonished but even fearful of his 
future. Our ‘feelings are hurt,’ we ‘grow angry,’ we ‘become exasperated,’ 
we ‘handed someone a good one,’ we ‘got in a good lick at someone’; the 
man over you is ‘stupid,’ ‘ignorant,’ you quarreled, you “blew up,’ you got 
sick, you had a headache, you had to show off before your subordinate, you 
were sulky, moody, abstracted all day. Your work did not go well, you 
fumbled your work, spoiled your material. You were cruel to those below 
you, you were ‘conceited’—one of the almost inevitable forms of display. 
‘Conceit,’ which all too often mars personality, is but a confession of the 
grossest kind of ignorance, A person who is wise always has such a vista 


242 BEHAVIORISM 


of things he knows nothing about in front of him that he grows more and 
more humble as his wisdom increases. Conceit comes from infant spoiling. 
Humility and inadequacies are similarly carry-overs and are bred in usually 
by an ‘inferior’ or inadequate father or mother. Slants of the parents in 
these directions account so well for the so-called ‘dispositional’ factors in 
families (I mean the slants that can be seen through several generations) 
that I cannot see why we have to fall back upon inheritance to account for 
them. 


I need not enlarge further upon infant carry-overs. In a way the 
whole of behaviorism is but an expression of the fact that infancy and 
childhood slant our adult personalities. This is a part of the field the 
Freudians call the ‘unconscious.’ The unscientific nature of Freud’s con- 
ception is surely apparent to you ere this. If it 1s not I’ll have to give 
you up. 


What is a ‘Sick’ Personality? 


Introduction ‘~~There is no more confusing field today, so far as use 
of terms goes, than that of Psychopathology. Physicians know little of 
behaviorism. Hence you find in psychopathology the terms of the old in- 
trospective psychology or the demonological terminology of the Freudians. 
I once hoped to live long enough to train a man thoroughly in behaviorism 
before he went into medicine and later into psychopathology, but so far I 
haven’t succeeded. The behaviorist who is a layman from a medical stand- 
point cannot drain this swamp and the physician who is not a behaviorist 
cannot do it. Hence the concepts of ‘mental disease’ and of the ‘unconscious’ 
with all of their confusions still flourish. The main difficulty with the phy- 
sician working in these fields is that he is unversed in the history of philos- 
ophy and even in physics. To the majority of psychopathologists and 
analysts consciousness is a real ‘force’—something that can do something, 
something that can start up a physiological process, or check, inhibit or down 
one already going on. No one unless he ignores physics and the history of 
philosophy could hold this view. No psychologist today would like to be 
classed as believing in interaction (I think some of them do!) of which this 
is an expression. Until you can get the physician who deals with behavior 
to face the physical fact that the only way you can get a billiard ball on the 
table in front of you to start moving—to go from a state of rest to a state 
of motion—is to strike it with a cue or to get another ball already in motion 
to strike it (or else have some other moving body hit it)—until you can get 
him to face the fact that if the ball is already in motion you cannot make 
it change its rate of motion or its direction unless you do one of these same 


PERSONALITY, 243 


things—you will never get a scientific viewpoint about psychopatholog- 
ical behavior. The psychopathologists—most of them—believe today that 
‘conscious processes can start the physiological ball rolling and then change 
its direction. Much as I have maligned the introspectionists, they are not 
quite so naive in their concepts. Even James long ago expressed the view 
(although he did not stick to it in ‘will’ and in ‘attention’) that the only 
way you could “down” or change a bodily process was to start some other 
bodily process going. If ‘mind’ acts on body, then all physical laws are in- 
valid. ‘This physical and metaphysical naiveté of the psychopathologist and 
analyst comes out in such expressions as “This conscious process inhibited 
this or that form of behavior”; “the unconscious desire keeps him from do- 
ing so and so.” Much of the confusion we have today dates back to Freud. 
His adherents cannot see this. Most of them through having to undergo 
analysis at his hands (either first, second, or third hand) have formed a 
strong positive ‘father’ organization. They have been unwilling to have 
their ‘father’ spoken of in criticism. This unwillingness to accept criticism 
and to find progress through it has brought the crumbling at the top of 
what started out to be the most significant movement in modern times. I 
venture to predict that 20 years from now an analyst using Freudian con- 
cepts and Freudian terminology will be placed upon the same plane as a 
phrenologist. And yet analysis based upon behavioristic principles ts here 
to stay and is a necessary profession in soctety—to be placed upon a par 
with internal medicine and surgery. By analyis I mean studying the cross 
section of personality in some such way as I have outlined it. This will 
be the equivalent of diagnosis. Combined with this will go unconditioning 
and then conditioning. These will constitute the curative side. Analysis 
as such has no virtue—no curative value. New habits, verbal, manual and 
visceral, of such and such kinds, will be the prescriptions the psychopath- 
ologist will write, 


Are There Such Things as Mental Diseases? 


I know that all of this more or less vague discussion about the analyst 
and the physician raises some definite questions which you phrase as fol- 
lows: Isn’t there such a thing as a mental disease? If so, what is it like 
and how do you cure it? 


As long as there is the misconception going the rounds that there is 
such a thing as the mental, I suppose there will be mental diseases, mental 
symptoms and mental cures. I view the whole matter otherwise. I can 
only roughly outline my own viewpoint. Sickness of personality, or be- 
navior illnesses, behavior disturbances, habit conflicts, are terms which I 


244 BEHAVIORISM 


should like to use in place of mental disturbances, mental diseases and the 
like. In many of the so-called psychopathological disorders (‘functional 
psychoses,’ ‘functional neuroses,’ etc.) there are no organic disturbances of 
sufficient gravity to account for personality disturbance. There may be no 
infections, no lesions anywhere, no absence of physiological reflexes (as 
there often is when there are organic diseases). And yet the individual 
has a sick personality. His behavior may be so badly disturbed or so in- 
volved that we call him insane (a purely social classification) and have to 
commit him temporarily or permanently. 


No one has yet given us a sensible classification of the various types 
of behavior disturbance that are present in a social structure such as ours. 
We hear of dementia praecox, manic depressive insanity, anxiety neuroses, 
paranoia, schizophrenia and many others. To me as a layman these divi- 
sions mean nothing. I know in general what is meant by appendicitis, 
cancer of the breast, gall stones, typhoid fever, tonsilitis, tuberculosis, 
paresis, brain tumor and even cardiac insufficiency. I know in general 
something about the organisms present when any are present, the kind of 
tissue attacked and the general course of the disease, and I can understand 
the physician when he tells me more about them. Yet when the psycho- 
pathologist tries to tell me about a ‘schiz’ or a ‘homicidal mania’ or an 
‘hysterical’ attack, I have the feeling, which has grown stronger with the 
years, that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. And I think the 
reason he doesn’t know what he is talking about is that he has always 
approached his patients from the point of view of the mind (the now 
passing concept) rather than from that of the way the whole body behaves 
and the genetic reasons for that behavior. The past few years have un- 
questionably seen considerable progress in this direction. 


To show the needlessness of introducing the ‘concept of mind’ in so- 
called mental diseases, I offer you a fanciful picture of a psychopatholog- 
ical dog (I use the dog because I am not a physician and have no right to 
use a human illustration—lI hope the veterinarians will pardon me!) With- 
out taking anyone into my counsel suppose I once trained a dog so that he 
would walk away from nicely-ground, fresh hamburg steak and would eat 
only decayed fish (true examples of this are now at hand). I trained him 
(by use of the electric shock) to avoid smelling the female dog in the 
usual canine way—he would circle around her but would come no closer 
than ten feet (J. J. B. Morgan has done something very close to this on 
the rat). Again, by letting him play only with male puppies and dogs and 
punishing him when he tried to mount a female, I made a homosexual 
of him (F. A. Moss has done something closely akin to this in rats). 
Instead of licking my hands and becoming lively and playful when I go to 


PERSONALITY, 245 


him in the morning, he hides or cowers, whines and shows his teeth. In- 
stead of going after rats and other small animals in the way of hunting, he 
runs away from them and shows the most pronounced fears. He sleeps in 
the ash can—he fouls his own bed, he urinates every half hour and any- 
where. Instead of smelling every tree trunk, he growls and fights and 
paws the earth but will not come within two feet of the tree. He sleeps 
only two hours per day and sleeps these two hours leaning up against a 
wall rather than lying down with head and rump touching. He is thin and 
emaciated because he will eat no fats. He salivates constantly (because I 
have conditioned him to salivate to hundreds of objects). This interferes 
with his digestion. Then I take him to the dog psychopathologist. His 
physiological reflexes are normal. No organic lesions are to be found any- 
where. The dog, so the psychopathologist claims, is mentally sick, actually 
insane; his mental condition has led to the various organic difficulties 
such as lack of digestion; it has ‘caused’ his poor physical condition. 
Everything that a dog should do—as compared with what dogs of his type 
usually do—he does not do. And everything that seems foreign for a dog 
to do he does. The psychopathologist says I must commit the dog to an 
institution for the care of insane dogs; that if he is not restrained he will 
jump from a ten-story building, or walk into a fire without hesitation. 


I tell the dog psychopathologist that he doesn’t know anything about 
my dog; that, from the standpoint of the environment in which the dog has 
been brought up (the way I have trained him) he is the most normal dog 
in the world; that the reason he calls the dog ‘insane’ or mentally sick is 
because of his own absurd system of classification. 


I then take the psychopathologist into my confidence. By this time he 
is disgusted and says, “Since you’ve brought this on, go cure him.” I 
attempt then to correct my dog’s behavior difficulties, at least up to the point 
where he can begin to associate with the nice dogs in the neighborhood. If 
he is very old or if things have gone too far, I just keep him confined; but 
if he is fairly young and he learns easily, I undertake to retrain him. I 
use all the methods you now know so well, in unconditioning him and then 
conditioning him. Soon I get him to eating fresh meat by getting him 
hungry, closing up his nose and feeding him in the dark. This gives me a 
good start. I have something basal to use in my further work. I keep him 
hungry and feed him only when I open his cage in the morning; the whip 
is thrown away; soon he jumps for joy when he hears my step. Ina few 
months’ time I not only have cleared out the old but also have built in the 
new. The next time there is a dog show I proudly exhibit him, and his 
general behavior is such an asset to his sleek, perfect body that he walks 
off with the blue ribbon. 


246 BEHAVIORISM 


All this is an exaggeration—almost sacrilege, you say! Surely there 
is no connection between this and the poor sick souls we see in the psycho- 
pathic wards in every hospital! Yes, I admit the exaggeration, but I am 
after elementals here. I am pleading for simplicity and ruggedness in the 
building stones of our science of behavior. I am trying to show by this 
homely illustration that you can by conditioning not only build up the be- 
havior complications, patterns and conflicts in diseased personalities, but 
also by the same process lay the foundations for the onset of actual orgamic 
changes which result finally in infections and lesions—all without intro- 
ducing the concept of the mind-body relation (‘influence of mind over the 
body’) or even without leaving the realm of natural science. In other 
words, as behaviorists, even in ‘mental diseases’ we deal with the same ma- 
terial and the same laws that the neurologists and physiologists deal with. 


How to Change Personality 

Changing the personality of the sick individual—the psychopath—is 
the work of the physician. However badly he handles his job at present, 
we have to go to him when a habit breakdown occurs. If I got to the point 
where I could not pick up my knife or fork, if one arm became paralyzed 
or if I couldn’t visually react to my wife and children, and a physical ex- 
amination showed no organic lesion of any kind, I should hasten to my 
psychoanalytic friends and say: “Please, in spite of all the mean things I’ve 
said about you, help me out of this mess.” 


Even we ‘normal ones,’ after having looked ourselves over and decided 
that we’d like to slough off a few of our worst carry-overs, find that mak- 
ing these changes in our personalities is no easy task. Can you learn chem- 
istry over night? To be a finished musician or artist in a year’s time? It 
would be difficult if you only had to learn these things, but it is doubly 
difficult when you have to unlearn a vast organized system of old habits 
before you can begin to put on the new. And yet this is what the individual 
faces who wants a new personality. No quack can do it for you, no cor- 
respondence school can safely guide you. Almost any event or happening 
might start a change; a flood might do it, a death in the family, an earth- 
quake, a conversion to the church, a breakdown in health, a fist fight—any- 
thing that would break up your present habit patterns, throw you out of 
your routine and put you in such a position that you would have to learn 
to react to objects and situations different from those to which you have 
had to react in the past—such happenings might start the process of build- 
ing a new personality for you. During the formation of new habit systems, 
the old begin to die through disuse—that is, there is loss in retention and 
hence the individual will be less and less dominated by the old habit 
systems. 


PERSONALITY, 247 


What do we have to do to change the personality? There must be 
both unlearning the things we have already learned (and the unlearning 
may be an active unconditioning process or just disuse) and learning the 
new things, which is always an active process. Thus the only way thor- 
oughly to change personality is to remake the individual by changing his 
environment in such a way that new habits have to form. The more 
completely they change, the more personality changes. Few individuals 
can do all this unaided. That is why we go on year in and year out with 
the same old personality. Some day we shall have hospitals devoted to 
helping us change ‘our personality because we can change the personality 
as easily as we can change the shape of the nose, only it takes more time. 


Language One Difficulty in the Way of Changing Personality 


There is one difficulty in changing personality by changing environ- 
ment, hitherto all too little thought of. It lies in the fact that when we 
attempt to change personality by changing the individual’s external envi- 
ronment, we cannot prevent the individual from taking his old internal 
environment with him in the shape of words and word substitutes. You 
can take a man who has never worked in his life, who has always been the 
spoiled darling of his mother, who has been a constant attendant upon the 
ladies of the stage, a patron of the best restaurants of the city, of the fine 
haberdashery shops, send him to the Congo Free States and put him in a 
situation for making a frontier individual out of himself. But he takes 
with him his own language and other substitutes for the world he has left, 
and we saw in studying language that language, when fully developed, 
really gives us a manipulable replica of the world we live in. Hence, if his 
present world does not begin to take hold of him, as it may not, he may 
withdraw from his frontier world and live the rest of his life in the old 
substitute world of words. Such an individual may become a “shut-in’— 
a day dreamer. 


But in spite of all the difficulties in the way, individuals can and do 
change their personalities. Friends, teachers, the theatres, the movies 
all help to make, to remake and to unmake our personalities. The man 
who never exposes himseif to such stimuli will never change his person- 
ality for a better one, - 


Behaviorism a Foundation for All Future Experimental Ethics 


All the way through this course I have attempted to show that while 
there is a science of psychology independent, interesting, worth while in 
itself, nevertheless to have a right to existence it must serve in some meas- 


248 BEHAVIORISM 


ure as a foundation for reaching out into human life. I think behaviorism 
does lay a foundation for saner living. It ought to be a science that 
prepares men and women for understanding the first principles of their 
own behavior. It ought to make men and women eager to rearrange their 
own lives, and especially eager to prepare themselves to bring up their own 
children in a healthy way. I wish I had time more fully to describe this, to 
picture to you the kind of rich and wonderful individual we should make of 
every healthy child if only we could let it shape itself properly and then 
provide for it a universe in which it could exercise that organization—a 
universe unshackled by legendary folk lore of happenings thousands of 
years ago; unhampered by disgraceful political history; free of fool- 
ish customs and conventions which have no significance in themselves, yet 
which hem the individual in like taut steel bands. I am not asking here for 
revolution; I am not asking people to go out to some God-forsaken place, 
form a colony, go naked and live a communal life, nor am I asking for a 
change to a diet of roots and herbs. I am not asking for ‘free love.” I 
am trying to dangle a stimulus in front of you, a verbal stimulus which, 
if acted upon, will gradually change this universe. For the universe will 
change if you bring up your children, not in the freedom of the libertine, 
but in behavioristic freedom—a freedom which we cannot even picture in 
words, so little do we know of it. Will not these children in turn, with 
their better wavs of living and thinking, replace us as society and in turn 
bring up their children in a still more scientific way, until the world finally 
becomes a place fit for human habitation? 


* Note: I am not arguing here for free anything—least of all free speech. I have always been 
very much amused by the advocates of free speech. In this harum-scarum world of ours, 
brought up as we are, the only person who ought to be allowed free speech is the parrot, 
because the parrot’s words are not tied up with his bodily acts and do not stand as sub- 
stitutes for his bodily acts. All true speech does stand substitutable for bodily acts, hence 
organized society has just as little right to allow free speech as it has to allow free action, 
which nobody advocates. When the agitator raises the roof because he hasn’t free speech, 
he does it because he knows that he will be restrained if he attempts free action. He 
wants by his free speech to get someone else to do free acting—to do something he him- 
self is afraid to do. The behaviorist, on the other hand, would like to develop his world 
of people from birth on, so that their speech and their bodily behavior could equally well 
be exhibited freely everywhere without running afoul of group standards. 


INDEX 


(h 


1 Varad huihy Wit cna W's 
aM AY Ite A 


yaa 
Lett 





DINED ES 


PACLIV IE? SEF CAIN: Of cence 10S” ft 
Adjustment, mature Of. ncx-ccocencsnnne 162 


Age, effect on habit formation............... 17I 
Piarenal Shands tee ere 63, 65 
fa Wh gh ofal ps waphhetdad Rin. .1 bills aiorA abel alee Sk! 65 
Vel LC O11 WA eRe Nala Ma ena Cebit Lea Rl 3 
eh eee oe ee ee 26, 179 
Arm, foetal movements Of. wenn 94, 
CONVO ete er Fee ee 49 
PAXIS-CV GCE ro ane. ah eee 50 


Behaviorism, 17; definition of, 11; 
goal of, 163 starting Point Of... 10 
Behavior, emotional, 148; intra-uter- 
ine, 88; unlearned, 74; early verbal 97 
Behaviorist, approach of, 10; advent 
of, 16; method of, 115; problems 


Oa AAtLOTING Ofc, en 6 
PEALE HLT Sayed Fie a gat AACA SUE, SO eR 154 
Birth equipment of human young.......... gt 
Nite ee eh EO go, 181 
RD POT NNSA aah lie ft ite aD O hel a  RR 8, 98 
Body, constitution of, 42 ff.; organs 

SBE dy LebAl es oc AOL BAe Nt ego 50 
SOTTO ALI Ota oe chee re eee 84, 
BRIDGMAN, LAURA) 32000 .. 193 
PEM DIS RD ne a EN A heey RARE RRND Ee 154 
CEB ENON Ie cet ate geet ca 66, 142 
EG BS RS be. Weld ciel Sc elon toed re eee 33 


Cells, connective tissue, 45; epithelial, 
44; hair, 51; nerve, 48; types of, 
43; striped muscle, 46; wunstriped 





ANT OS: hale) SNE al Sots Mg eeu ABsaand 46 
Central mervous System occccccsccscrsuneesssneee 43 
Children, negative responses of ............ 142 
Conditioned emotional reactions, 333 

Tetiex :methods. oe 26 
Conditioning, of emotional life, 136; 

I EORESBT OF Meee niet e ee ns wh IES 
Cones, ‘retinal c....... see aS | 
Consciousness, examination of ....... wan, S 
STEY pa Cle Colo, i ee SUR IAS Sis Aloe lalla woe TE Uy 
Crawling Boe en are coe OG 
Cretin .. a MeleiciheAM oEE 64. 
Crying, 90: “situations calling out re- 

ROMO Mee ee eee LRT40 
Curves, of learning 69 
DA OV DING eee eee nes 78, 109, 121 


Deraccationie oe ne at 92 


249 


Dend titeste ne ce eee ene pe Ts | 
Dog, the psychopathological ............. 244 
Dominance of language habits WH 204 


DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN ......... 230 
Drugs: effect ot: on habits rigs 
Dialisne se ee ee eee 4 
Ductless glands, conditioning Of 68 


Emotions, 108; conditioned, origin of, 
117 ff.; general survey of, 108; 
SUMMA Py OFF ee ee 129 
Emotional life, complications of ...... 125 
Elements} )‘affective ti eee 
Endocrine organs) coe ua eee Oe 
Environment) peice cee ee 


ESDING DIV UT ee Le ee eee nO 
ethics niece ane ba eee SPA Cee nome rey 17, (37 
Exercise) effect: Ofsce area ee 56 
Experimentation, SOCIA] o...cceeesccssenscemareeenses 35 


Eye, early MOVEMENtS Of crrmecccnreecmmenne 93 


Fakers, im psychology cc.ccsecssncsscessensseees 230 ff. 
Kategue, of muscles cian sas cS OF 
PY Fy banana AIDC anak Ae sels Madea od nds 3})'33, 0120) ff, 
Battery ce ee eee ee ioe” 


Foot, early Movements Of nccccccncnernee 94) 
Brequencyt(.2.h ce en 
BRU Dye ree re a eaiets 209, 210 
FREUDIANS 2 SUIOS Ts 247 
Functional: psychology/.0 ay 


Gland, adrenal, 63; conditioning of, 
30; duct, 61; ductless, 31, 63; en- 
docrine, 63; parathyroid, 63; pine- 
al, 63, 67; pituitary, 63; puberty, 
63; salivary, conditioning of, 30; 
tear, possibility of conditioning —. 30 
Grasping ee ee ee a 


Habits, manual, 159; as basis of per- 
sonality, 218 ff.; effect of age upon, 
1713 effect of drugs upon, 175; ex- 
amples of, 164; factors affecting 
formation of, 171 ff.; formation of, 
steps in, 25, 162, 164; final stages 
in, 176; problems of, 168; relation 


to Conditioned reflexes ....cececcsecmeuenn 166 
Hand, early movements Of occcrcscccscseceen LG. 
Handedness ee ene ue eens Oo 
Head, early movements Of onccercccccsnsemne 94 
Hiccoughing wea ek ee . 90 


250 INDEX, 
HOWE, S. Gy ececnn ebceadceniettacanba ee LOS 
HOWLAND; JOHN Pe 2438 
HUG-HECLM UL Hi nao 210 
Human young, birth equipment of .....go ff. 
Hog ver cae ee ee ee gr 
La ALG i Be OF LAY ath RRs kL es label berit 
TINA DES eee nts nl tan eRe ee 
Imitation, of vocal sounds) oa 185 


Infant, study of, 188; carry-overs 236 


A TISEINCE Pere ek ee ech ee Omen At 
TNSUHi eons tet nc ema aae6 
Integration Mm ae 72 
TNTPOSPECHON We vate cn wte pc center a ecctensent Ap aLO. 
PANVIS gee ges 2 e8 S550, UAOA OS: 

TOS, UIIO, TIT, X12, 11279136, tA, 72 
A CALOUSY dee ee ee ee 148 ff. 
TOHNSON AION ee ee a Higes 
TONES SVLAR YRC VER eee seis 

Lehi Renata ab 203, ea 116, 132, 133, 135, 141 
FG BBD Qk Citta Mie Bats RE Th a eae Leer oe ede A) 
POAIN GD Clee ee eae 
KOLPE ei Se eee le aie 
AGAIN GE Arctic oeumat onde ecaidiiee ALOR 
Language ieee ee 181, 247 
IGA S ISIN Wee eth enters ooh ey} 
1 EVD 0 EF ONG lca dick A ies BE oho 172, 192, 204 
Laughing, situations calling out ......... 141 
Learning, by observation, 38; curves 

OT ree ee at te he ee ee ee . 169 
LODGEMSIR OLIVER) Se e280 
DLO VG Bk eS et eee fot 33, ‘20 ff. 
MANTEGAZZA on erences 110 
Marriage ye vouces a ee ee. 27 aS, 
MARSTON ieee, oe eee ee 154 
Masturbation, early appearance of... 92 
MCDOU GADD or ee iacaeranen 3, 112 
Meaning) cacnae ee tte er oe ee 200 
Memory, 1773 as verbal habit... 188 
Methods, experimental] .escescssscemsmecsenseene 34 
“Mental” tests, 34.3 Cis ase ceescecunsnn 244 
MEYER Age ae es Se ae 8 
MINKOWSKI] (ieee ce ee . 88 
MORGAN HT Te ee ee eds 244 
GCG TSE Y Vali eA Ria tea are LE AE PAE SW 
Movements, hampering OF enccnsscccssoseesceerseen 122 
MUNSTERBERG oe 226 
Muscles, conditioning of, 31; as work- 


ing machines, 553 fOOd OF csmiecaeuene §5 


Continued 


Negative responses, in children —... 142 
Nerve, impulses of —_____ 4 
Nervous system, central, 43; how 
made! up... 4 ee 
Nucleus, of nerve cell _.____ 
Neurology: 
N GUL ON Gye oe cenrtecgetrrcemercenemsaenee 48, so 


Objects, word substitutes for ns —- 189 

Organization, forms of early word, 
182; verbal, 182; without words 
E:YeUh) fe) eNO eI 


Organs, hollow, 573 sense, 51; viscer- 

G1 1 acescecisieoses con coenroresngicenoesbecreseivetr seeoceti see an 
Parathyroids) 3... eee 63, 65 
PAVLOV (2 eee ee 
Penis, erection of: 2.2 ae gt 


“Personality, 216 ff.; analysis of, 216; 


disturbance of, 242; “experts,” 229; 
how to study, 223; how to change, 





246; rough chart of, 221; weak- 

NESSES ODM ee 235) ate 
PETER: ON ee — 166 
Phrenology 3 ae ene 233 
Pineal body 12... 
Pituitary (body. oe eee 63, 66 
Practice, effect, Of) 2m. 
Problems, psychological analysis of, 

a9; of behaviorists: 2 eee scone UG 
Prohibition, effects Of ceceemcnnsnemmenn 36 £, 
Protoplasm, <3 eee mee iy 
Puberty gland ... ow sant eciputecrteronomend ge 


Punishment, corporeal, 1445 legal .. by 
Psychology, functional, 17; introspec- 
tive, 3, 17; old and new "contrasted, 
3; religious paves tar of; 46 


SOCTD cocre cece dcenceenttrce ere cctvntasercoremnent les at 
Psychoanalysis I clpelneiceoiseel tee eae ae 
Rage yt ncn le cieeeceet a cee eee 33, 120 ff. 


Reactions, of unstriped muscles, 32; 

human zene UR OL 
Recency ... 
Refiex, Babinski as eet rpreeneio e . 105 
Reflexes, conditioned, 4, 8; embryo- 

logical, 88; long, 71; short —... oe 
Religion). ee 18, 37 
Response, conditioned, 23; differential, 

28; emotional, beginnings of, 1203 

emotional, conditioned, 8; emotion- 

al, variations in, 116; feeding, 953 

general classification of, re, 163 


9 FOE PF OCSS LOTTE HOY TOE DEOCTT US OVEN 29 


FAURE SEARLS ENONENE NI 


INDEX, 


general nature of, 13; glandular, 
28; learned, 15; new, 24; organs 
of, 54; prediction of, 16; substitu- 
tion in, 23; secretion, 62; uncondi- 


WECRPEO besa ee ere ce as 
Rods, of retina ............. PU Alaeeoreule ear 6 Y 
RUSSELL, BERTRAND Sui we 166; 
PG eNOS RM ee eee ie oS 
Sense organs, general plan of ...Wmc 5! 
PSST YING ee ee npc ctrecencion LAS 
SIV Leen ete ree en as 
NINOOLDMINUSClER. one eee AT 
STCO ZING Beta eee cn 3 OO 
Social factors, 1 CMMOtiOMs eceeeeceerecseceeenrene 135 
SOCIOLOR GINS eee es ce 17 
SPVGG t OO icc cp teeecctiorames . 248 
REG Yc oA RI hase: cant eee aca | 
Steadiness of head in infants ............... 94 
SP BBE 0's WG i ele ele SR le lon teat evs 
Stimulus, conditioned, 22; and re- 

sponse, formula of, 21; general 

nature of, 11; substitution, summary 

of, 1333 unconditioned ............--. nla Pp) 
Stimuli, widening range of ......... 13 
Straimeeenusculariee st et) 6G 
“Stream of consciousness,’ 105; of 

EST Ti, oO CU NE da Licance AMM ad Al Sa Danan 105 
Sth peuwmuscles een ee 46 
Substitution, of stimulus 22.2... cennenene 2 
SU Greer ae le ee eit 47 
SUR Renee en ee oe 115 
Swit ming, lack of response in infants 97 
Lia Vea oe ee a ee 180 ff. 
TDeiiee amen Gate ee ee a 74, 
‘éearsneariveappedrance: oft... gt 
POSEM mame Utal ie cos Reo 34, 


Thinking, 6, 180 ff., 190, diagram of, 
214; forms of, 195; in infants, 208; 
new forms of, 198; when called 
out, 1943; with and without words 
etl 2h 


2580 res 820000 7 Fam Z TEE NTe UES 000 ESS ODOIRDIAR DI ISS205RFO0SS: 





Continued 


LETC CHE NER seme mee oreo 
Tissue, connective, 45; epithelial, 44; 








MIUSCULA Tease ee nee ene ae 
(PHOMAS Will pee a eee b 
BHORSO Nig eer ee Me 
Thyroid gland, 63; secretion, effect 

ONWSTOW Cie meme eee cd 
VAY TORN es ona ce a ee 22.65 
Dract,y alimentary vos ces 
Training, vetiectvofearly (22 oa de 
‘rats, lackhotementalies te 
SDranst éraye se oe soe Patella. 
Trunk movements, in infant aM 
‘Purning: head;.in infants ..0-.e 


Unconditioning, of emotional life —.. 
Unconscious, the, behavioristic ex- 

planation of ee er ae ee ee 
Unlearned equipment, summary of .... 
ULRICH) Acuna Rare en aes eee 
Urine, voidance of, in infants 





Verbalization, importance of .......... 
Viscera, 57; importance of in think- 

IN ee ee UL ONY Ir nee eran S 
Vocal sounds, early 
VORONOFF ..... 


2022202009081 20200 p0een ee oen ep eT eT ONT ADETtNSIIa 


7 99 D922 BROOTHNIG G07 TT PTDSI900 109009007099 708002 07 RTT Bes Oa 


NYA GF fog peronmaton Mees darian onl (3D 2a Ee ens 
AE) fog Ah ll dtl cRNA Ae SEU ION VEEL Ald Be 
WATSON, ROSALIE RAYNER 172, 
Wi leer ee oe ics is A eee 
WILLIAMS, WHITRIDGE ......... 88, 
Word, reaction method, 156; organi- 
zation, occurring with manual and 
visceral) organization: . 2.5 
Words, list of infant, 183; as substi- 
tutes for Saha Nath st bacibe sles blll sel oo ut 
WUNDT . 3) 








2951 


203) 


184. 
5 


Young, human, birth equipment of 90 ff. 


Write for Price, $3.00 


PSYCHOLOGY 


What ft Has to Teach You About Yourself and Your World 


BY 


EVERETT DEAN MARTIN 
Director, The People’s Institute 


A complete outline of Psychology which ‘‘relates the new science of 
the mind to common problems of the hour.’’—-The New York Times. 


Lecture 


CONTENTS : 
What Psychology really is—Its Uses and Abuses. 


Psychology and Physiology—A Study of Reactions. 
Psychology and Philosophy — The Place of 


William James. 
What Psychologists think about Consciousness. 
The Fatality of Habits. 
Human Nature and the Problems of Instinct. 
Man and his Emotions. 
A Lecture on How We Think. 


The Value of the Fictions We invent about 
Ourselves. 


The Unconscious and its Influence upon Human 
Behavior. 


The Significance of the Intelligence Tests. 
Is there a Group Mind? What governs the Behavior 
of People in Society. 


The Psychology of Propaganda and Public Opinion. 
The Psychology of Religion. 

Are there Psychological differences of Race. 

The Psychology of Politics. 

Ethics in the Light of Psychology. 


Psycho-analysis—What Freud and his Followers 
have done to Psychology. 

Behaviorism. — The Latest and Most Debated 
Development. 


How much Progress can Human Nature Stand? 





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